Who is eligible for free school meals? Characterising free school meals as a measure of disadvantage in England

Abstract

This paper presents a description of the background characteristics and attainment profile of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) in England, and of those missing a value for this variable. Free school meal eligibility is a measure of low parental income, widely used in social policy research as an individual indicator of potential disadvantage. It is routinely treated as context for judging both individual and school-level attainment, as an indicator of school composition, and has been proposed as the basis for the pupil premium funding policy for schools. Knowledge of the quality, reach and limitations of FSM as an indicator is therefore fundamental to accurate decision-making in a number of important areas. This paper uses a national dataset of all pupils (PLASC) for 2007. It looks at the relationship between different indicators of pupil background and attainment to help decide how useful FSM remains in relation to its suggested alternatives, and how to handle the crucial question of missing data and to describe more fully than previously the national picture of who is eligible for free school meals. The results show that, while the distinction between take-up and eligibility has been eroded, FSM remains a useful and clear stratifying variable for pupil attainment patterns in school, linked to type of school attended, school mobility, living in care, special needs, first language and minority ethnic group. The pupils missing FSM values fall into two groups, based largely on their type of school and how long they have been there. One group attends fee-paying schools and is most similar to non-FSM pupils elsewhere and could be aggregated with them in future analyses that do not want to omit them. The remaining missing FSM pupils form a deprived and perhaps superdeprived group. These should not be omitted, nor assumed to be like non-FSM pupils, as currently happens in official school performance figures in England in a way that disadvantages schools with very deprived intakes. The proposal here is that missing FSM pupils in statefunded institutions should be treated in future as a third distinct group. If these issues about missing data are resolved, and other limitations accepted, FSM remains a better indicator of low socioeconomic status than the current alternatives discussed in the paper.

Turnos e segregação escolar: discutindo as desigualdades intraescolares

“…Parents' educational level is one of the best predictor of children's longterm learning trajectory. Even in countries with high rates of social mobility, parental characteristics, such as occupation and educational level, are the best predictors of children's success (GORARD;SEE, 2013).…”

Teachers’ views on recognising and using home languages in predominantly monolingual primary schools

“…The area has a moderately high proportion (around 16%) of children claiming free school meals (FSM), slightly above the national average of 14.5% (DfE, 2016). This is often used as a proxy for socio-economic status and indicates an increased chance of children obtaining poorer academic qualifications, having a special educational need and being in care (Gorard, 2012). Thus, participating teachers and schools may have demands on their time and curriculum space additional to those that are purely academic.…”

The link between Academies in England, pupil outcomes and local patterns of socio-economic segregation between schools

“…But it means that more data is needed on each student and this adds considerably to the level of missing data. At least 10% of students are missing data every year on each key variable such as whether they are eligible for free school meals, living in care, and their ethnicity or additional educational needs (Gorard 2012). The outcome is a larger error component in a much smaller result.…”