Primary schools could have missed out on £67 million in pupil-premium funding last year because of the introduction of universal infant free school meals (UIFSM), a new analysis has shown.
All children in Reception and Years 1 and 2 became eligible for free school meals in 2014.
Schools only receive pupil-premium funding for children whose parents have shown evidence that they are eligible for free schools meals.
The extension of free school meals to all infants led to fears that fewer parents of infants would register them, reducing the amount of pupil-premium money that primary schools received.
Between 2013-14 and 2016-17, the proportion of primary school children eligible for the pupil premium fell from 27 per cent to 24 per cent.
An Education Datalab post by statistician Dave Thomson attempts to estimate how much of this fall could be due to UIFSM, as opposed to other factors such as changes to the economy and changes to benefit eligibility.
It says: “In total, an extra 51,000 pupils might have been eligible for deprivation funding in 2017-18 [because of UIFSM] – just over 1 per cent of pupils. At the prevailing rate, this amounts to £67 million in funding.”
It adds that the percentage of pupils eligible for funding fell further this January, to 23.3 per cent, “so the amount of missing funding for 2018-19 would have increased”.
Mr Thomson concludes: “It does appear that some schools will be missing out on pupil-premium funding as a result of universal infant free school meals. Not huge amounts of money, but enough for a few little extras.”