The bluntness of the free-school meals percentage.
One thing we do at Close the Gaps is to help schools understand some of the barriers their disadvantaged pupils may be facing. Before we help them to talk to pupils and parents, we often start by doing some research in the form of a socio-economic report. They can be a great tool for understanding the context of your catchment area and some of the vulnerabilities they may face. As we do them it is so clear that measuring the disadvantage of a school cohort purely through a percentage of how many students are free school meals is such a blunt tool. It’s like using a mallet to crack an egg for your breakfast.
We’ve just worked with a large comprehensive based in a northern city. It had an FSM percentage of 14%. Considerably lower than the national average it also had pretty middling levels for all areas when you looked at an average Index of Multiple Deprivation reading for the cohort. Let me give you an idea of what some other schools with 14% can be like. Hanborough Manor School in leafy, rural West Oxfordshire for example, sitting in one of the top 10 least deprived local authorities or Cobham Free School in Elmbridge in Surrey where the average house price is nearly £800,000.
At first glance deprivation and poverty wouldn’t be a large problem for that school. When we dug further into the figures over 250 students lived in areas which were in the highest 10% of deprivation for the country, some lived in areas in the highest 0.5% comparable to deprivation measures in the infamous Jaywick in Essex or areas of Blackpool and Middlesborough. Over 600 of the cohort were in areas that had the highest 20% of food poverty nationally. As school leaders it makes a real difference to the way you lead if significant numbers of your cohort may be facing real barriers in terms of poverty and deprivation. Visitors (including inspectors) and those looking at basic tables of data wouldn’t recognise those challenges from a 14% FSM label.
There are a whole different group of things to think about if you have extremes of deprivation and affluence in your cohort than if the distribution is uniform. It can generate issues in data interpretation, day-to-day operations, equity, and culture. The most effective responses to this tend to combine analysis that makes polarisation visible, universal provision that reduces stigma, and targeted support that removes barriers quickly. Aiming school policy and process at one end of the scale can end up disadvantaging the other group of students. Policies designed around a “typical” family can assume stable housing, predictable time, money for extras, and confidence in navigating systems. That will exclude some. Policies designed only around hardship can alienate families who expect a wide enrichment offer and strong academic extension.
If you really want to understand a school context you have to go digging deeper than the headline FSM measure.
Everywhere you look in education we use free school meals percentage as measure of disadvantage. It impacts on funding and on pupil premium strategies, there are articles looking at Ofsted results and links to it and research around how well schools reflect their catchments using it. Maybe the measure is a necessary one in terms of being able to run something as large as an education system but don’t judge your school and the cohort needs by looking at it.
Here’s some elements it is worth thinking about in addition to that FSM headline figure.
1) Double disadvantage
In 2025 there were over 1.7million pupils in England with SEND, 5.3% of these had an EHCP. Nearly half (43.8%) of these EHCP pupils were eligible for free school meals in comparison to 22% without SEND. Disadvantage is often compounded. When you look at the progress and barriers in your cohort do you look at them in terms of those pupils who are SEN and FSM or just separately? The double disadvantage is reflected in attendance figures with attendance being worse for those who are FSM and those who are SEND. The Sutton Trust has identified this double disadvantage as being something that is found in lower numbers in the most successful schools: “It is not simply SEND that is being unevenly distributed across the system; Sutton Trust’s evidence suggests it is particularly children experiencing both low income and SEN Support who are least likely to be represented in high-performing school intakes.” How many of your students have double disadvantage? How does it affect their attendance, suspension data or progress scores?
2) Not everyone in poverty accesses Free School Meals
Back to our school with 14% FSM. They had over 150 pupils on their school register who lived in areas with the highest 20% of deprivation in the country but didn’t access free school meals. The data suggested that some families were eligible but weren’t accessing the support. Maybe it was a choice, maybe a lack of knowledge, maybe a struggle to complete the right forms. For some families they earn slightly above the FSM threshold but still struggle with many of the barriers of poverty. Although there will be a move to free school meals for all families accessing universal credit from 2026/27 the DfE has said that families will still need to apply. Supporting applications and raising the visibility and lowering the stigma of accessing free school meals helps families and helps school budgets. What could you do to increase the uptake in your catchment area? Do all your initiatives to support under-resourced pupils have universal access?
3) Deep poverty
The FSM label doesn’t differentiate between a working family earning just under the threshold and one in long-term deep poverty or destitution. Those working in safeguarding teams in schools will know that there are families in most schools in temporary housing, families lacking beds and furniture, with no carpets on their floors. There will be families in most schools who struggle to buy food and are reliant on foodbanks and can’t keep the electricity or heating on. I’ve met families with no fridge who kept meat in a drawer in the kitchen, I’ve met families who can’t all attend school at the same time as they have to share uniform. The UK Child Poverty Strategy says there are two million children across the country in deep material poverty, the JRF say that one million children live in destitution where an individual lacks one of the necessities for survival – shelter, food, heating or clothing……one million! If you’re a teacher who hasn’t seen this then think yourself fortunate but go and speak to your safeguarding team. They’re often great at keeping pupil needs really confidential but it can mean a lack of understanding from relatively affluent teachers who have never had to experience poverty. Ask them what some of the families in your cohort are facing.
Looking at your cohort and analysing the postcodes of pupils by the IMD can be useful here, it stops higher averages masking a real understanding and helps you understand potential vulnerabilities in different areas of your catchment. The IMD tells you what kind of deprivation sits around your school. It doesn’t tell you which individual child has which barrier, but it gives you clues as to who may be most vulnerable and helps you to start asking the right questions. For example, if some areas have really high deprivation around health and disability then, as a school leader, you may decide to work harder to bring greater access to the school nurse. You may try and improve school mental health support or work to improve links with family support services.
4) The risk factors
If you’re part of a larger family, a single-parent family, have someone disabled in the household, are from an ethnic minority or have young children in the house then you have a higher risk of living in poverty. Census data can give a picture of the postcodes the children in your catchment come from and then whether they have an increased vulnerability from any of these factors. Looking at your cohort and the census data of the different postcodes that are represented can help understand some of the barriers. Census data can tell us which households in our catchment are most likely to have overcrowded housing, no access to a car or high unemployment all of which can create barriers to engagement in school. From indications of vulnerability like this we can then work to reduce these barriers for our cohort.
5) Crime data
Our reports also look at local crime data. It can be really helpful for looking at both which of your pupils may have more vulnerabilities, but also which type of crimes are most prevalent. You can then be proactive in response, building in curricular or intervention support around issues that are particular risks locally.
6) Data is not enough
Any census or IMD data just gives indications of barriers, it doesn’t actually confirm that a child is struggling with a particular barrier. It’s only when schools talk to parents and pupils that real clarity emerges. Examples include schools finding out that parents who worked in the cash economy and had little bank account access were struggling to pay on the schools new cashless system or that parents wanted to attend parents evenings but struggled to access it with no car and other children to look after. The EEF toolkit says parental engagement improves progress by over 4 months with little cost but also flags up that schools need to listen to less-involved parents and understand the lives of families if they want engagement to work. Read our article on parental engagement here for a more in-depth look at the importance of this.
7) Turning data into response
Of course, it isn’t enough just to get more understanding about an area. As school leaders understanding turns into impact when we work to reduce the barriers we see. All data can do is help us to focus our work on reducing the right barriers. All our reports come with ideas for responses to the issues the data picks out. For example, let’s look at just one issue that can be flagged in data - areas of your catchment with high food poverty. If that was the case, then a few ways you could respond are by:
· Build a universal ‘nobody goes hungry’ culture
· Offer breakfast to all (quick and routine)
· Track breakfast for uptake and adjust for bus timings or lateness
· Have a discrete snack and water offer in pastoral bases
· Check how your lunch system handles low balances
· Avoid different queues or systems for free school meals
· Check your FSM’s actually feed pupils well (a slice of pizza, a cookie and a bottle of flavoured water doesn’t fill up a teenager – I know, I have two!)
· Make sure FSM pupils have access to food at break and don’t have to wait for lunch if they’re hungry
· Partner with local foodbanks to help families access food for home
All these may seem peripheral to teaching and learning and excellent teaching but, however good the teaching, who is going to learn well when they are hungry?
Pupil premium percentage may be a label to tell you who brings a funding stream. It does not tell you, which of your school may be living through long-term poverty, deep material hardship, unsafe streets, overcrowded housing, caring responsibilities, ill health, or the multiple impact of several of those at once.
If you’re interested in a socio-economic report for your school, then let us know. We don’t just automatically crunch figures to prepare them; we work to individually understand your context and follow the report up with meetings to help you action plan around your next steps. Just get in contact here.
It’s really important too, in all of this work to work hard to avoid negative labels and pre-conceptions. There is a definite danger that analysing data in this way can lead to judging pupils from certain areas. We really have to guard against this – the evidence base is really strong that, as teachers, we have strong unconscious biases towards pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds. For this reason, as we increase our awareness of the barriers some members of our school communities may be facing, we should also be taking positive steps to educate our teachers around unconscious bias and to build our systems to reduce this as much as possible. Take a read here to understand more about both the evidence base around unconscious bias and the steps that can reduce it.
