BREAKING: @TheIFS analysis finds that around 160,000 children who got free school meals under the old legacy system WILL lose out under govt’s new criteria for universal credit schoolsweek.co.uk/160000-childre…
Although @TheIFS confirms govt’s claim that there will be 50k net increase in number of pupils eligible for free means, it says this figure hides “winners and losers”. E.g. although 210k who didn’t get FSM before will now get them, 160,000 will lose eligibility
This will make for uncomfortable reading for the government, which spent a long parliamentary debate (and a lot of social media afterwards) claiming no child will lose eligibility under the new system #freeschoolmeals
Also interesting/important is the analysis of the impact of the government’s decision to freeze the £7,400 threshold until 2021-22 rather than uprate based on CPI/average earnings. @TheIFS says impact of this is that between 80-100,000 pupils lose out.
Another important thing here is the impact on disadvantage data. FSM entitlement is currently the main identifier of disadvantage used by schools and govt. Changes proposed by the govt will change which pupils are labelled as disadvantaged and corrupt data for years to come.
