Free school meals

If you or your child receives a qualifying benefit, you could be eligible for free school meals. This could save you up to £400 a year, as well as your child then also being eligible for our Healthy Holidays school holiday clubs.

Eligibility

Your child qualifies for free school meals if you receive:

Universal Credit with an annual net earned income threshold of less than £7400
income-based Jobseeker's Allowance
income-related Employment and Support Allowance
Income Support
Child Tax Credit with an annual income of less than £16,190 (as long as you don't receive Working Tax Credit)
Working Tax Credit run-on (paid for four weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit)
the 'guaranteed' element of the State Pension Credit
support under part six of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999

Your child may also be entitled to a free school meal because of a benefit they receive in their own right.

How to apply

If you live in Barnsley

If you live in Barnsley and your child goes to school in Barnsley, fill in our online form below to apply for free school meals.

If you live in Barnsley but your child goes to school in another area such as Rotherham, Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds, Wakefield, Bradford or Kirklees, you should apply to the relevant council for your child’s school.

If you live outside Barnsley

If you live in Rotherham, Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds, Kirklees or Wakefield but your child goes to school in Barnsley, fill in our online form above to apply for free school meals.

If your child is a Barnsley College student

If your child attends Barnsley College, see their website for details of help available with college meals.

What happens next

We aim to make a decision within seven days of you applying. We'll write to you to let you know our decision. We also let the school know if your child is entitled to a free school meal.

Changes you need to tell us about

You must tell us straight away if:

your child leaves school or moves to another address
your child moves school
you move to another address

More information

Automatic enrolment for free school meals

Based on information we already hold about Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support, we may find a household meets the criteria for free school meals even though we might not have received an application for these.

To increase the pupil premium funding for all schools in Barnsley, we may use this existing data to automatically award free school meals to eligible children.

If you don't want us to use your Housing Benefit or Council Tax Support information for free school meal awards, please contact us online and let us know.

Applying for free school meals for children in reception, year 1 and year 2

All children in reception, year 1 and year 2 get free school meals. However, if you receive one of the benefits listed above you should still apply for a free school meal as you may then also get help with:

the cost of residential school trips (speak to your school about this)
travel costs to school - see our school travel page for more details
music lessons at school - these must be provided by Barnsley Music Service to qualify
free school milk

For each child registered for free school meals, the school will receive an annual pupil premium of:

£1445 for primary schools
£1035 for senior schools

This is additional money for your child’s school.

Entitlement to free school meals due to the rollout of Universal Credit

From April 2018 the criteria used to determine which pupils are eligible for free school meals was updated to reflect the introduction of Universal Credit and the phasing out of other income-based benefits.

To ensure families were not disadvantaged during this transition, protection arrangements have been put in place. This applies until your child either leaves primary school or secondary school.

If you'd like more details about this, please call us on 01226 787787 and select option 3.

Data protection

We’ll use the information from your free school meals application, and any supporting evidence you send us, to process your claim. We won't give information about you to anyone else, or use information about you for other purposes, unless the law allows us to.

Call 01226 787787

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