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Education benefits

You can get free school meals for your children if you are on the following:

• income support
• income based jobseeker's allowance
• income-related employment and support allowance
• pension credit guarantee credit
• child tax credit - if you do not work more than 16 hours a week and your income is below £16,190
• working tax credit - cases where a parent is entitled to working tax credit during the four-week period immediately after their employment ceases, or after they start to work less than 16 hours per week
• working tax credit in Scotland- if your income is below £6,420 (see Education (School Lunches) (Scotland ) Regulations 2009 (SI 2009/178)
• you are getting support under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (asylum seekers).

Children who receive income support or income based jobseeker's allowance in their own right are also eligible.

The Government was proposing to extend the provision of school meals to include primary school children whose parents are in receipt of working tax credit but have a household income less than £16,190.

Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education has now stated in a letter to the Shadow Secretary, Ed Balls that the planned extension of free meals to low income families has been cancelled.

“Having examined my options in depth, I have therefore decided that we will not be able to proceed with the additional free school meal pilots or the extension of free school meals to some primary school children this year – though we will proceed with existing pilots so as to assess better the case for increasing eligibility in the future.”  

The Scottish Government intended to give all primary school children (P1 to P3 pupils) free school meals from August 2010 but will now do this in stages beginning with those schools that are in the '20 per cent most deprived communities in a Council area or an alternative targeting scheme of equal extent'.

For more information see www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Education/Schools/HLivi/Schoolmeals.

Help with travel and uniforms

You may also be able to get help with the costs of travel to school or be entitled to a school clothing grant. For more information contact your Local Authority.

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