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