Will universal primary free school meals help to reduce absence?
Some local authorities have provided universal free school meals for pupils in their schools for some time. We look at whether this had any impact on reducing absence
What will be the impact of extending universal free school meals in London?
We run through some options for evaluating the impact on absence and attainment of extending free school meals to pupils in Years 3 to 6 in schools in the Capital.
The 2019 Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index
What do IDACI and free school meal eligibility say about deprivation at regional level?
How much Pupil Premium funding are primary schools missing out on?
Primary schools could have been £67m worse off in 2017/18 as a result of the universal infant free school meals policy.
The impact of early rollout of Universal Credit on free school meals eligibility
An example of how eligibility for free school meals changes in response to changes in benefits policy.
Long-term disadvantage, part four: Our friends in the north
This is part three in a series of blogposts exploring long-term disadvantage. Other posts in the series can be found here. Some of you might remember the 1996 TV series in which Christopher Ecclestone plays Nicky Hutchinson. As an impatient politician he argues that “Tomorrow is too late”. The Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP) has today issued [...]
Explore England’s changing free school meals rates
Most of the time our work involves using the National Pupil Database to examine particular aspects of the education system. However, it can also throw up interesting insights into the state of the nation more generally. Last year, we wrote about how the percentage of pupils eligible for and claiming free school meals (FSM) had [...]
Long-term disadvantage, part three: Ethnicity, EAL and long-term disadvantage
This is part three in a series of blogposts exploring long-term disadvantage. Other posts in the series can be found here. The previous post touched on the relationship between ethnicity, disadvantage and KS2-to-KS4 progress. It made a simple distinction, with white British pupils in one group and all other minority ethnic pupils in another group. [...]
Long-term disadvantage, part two: How do Pipworth Primary and Sheffield Park Academy do so well for their disadvantaged pupils?
This is part two in a series of blogposts exploring long-term disadvantage. Other posts in the series can be found here. The first post in this series showed how the attainment and progress of pupils varied according to how often they had been FSM-eligible – with pupils who are FSM-eligible on almost every occasion (90% [...]