Maximising Free School Meals

Case study

Maximising Free School Meals: Opt-Out Auto Award

“

Thank you for all the support from Basis and Bremner throughout this project. Your team played a pivotal role in ensuring Devon’s teams successfully completed the opt-out auto-award initiative.” Jack Newton, Deputy Director - Inclusion and Learning, Devon County Council

The Context

Councils across the UK are facing significant challenges in tackling child poverty and food insecurity. We know that ensuring families can access the support they’re entitled to isn’t straightforward.

To improve uptake of Free School Meals (FSM), many councils are adopting an opt-out auto-award approach.

In practice, this involves councils proactively identifying children who are entitled to but not currently receiving FSM.

Together with Bremner & Co, we have developed and refined an optimised auto-enrolment process for FSM. We’ve successfully implemented it in five local authorities across the country, including the first ever two-tier county council.

So far, this work has identified over 3,381 pupils, unlocking over £4 million in additional Pupil Premium funding.

What are Free School Meals

Free School Meals (FSM) provide crucial support for the increasing number of families struggling with the cost of living, food insecurity and child poverty. These meals support pupils aged 5-16 whose families receive certain benefits, such as Universal Credit, Housing Benefits, or Council Tax Reduction.

The FSM award is more than just a healthy meal. When a child registers, their school also receives additional Pupil Premium funding. These funds help with things like uniform grants and access to Holiday Activity Food programmes.

But many children are missing out on FSM

Historically, families have had to apply to receive FSMs. The pupil’s school or the council needs to verify their application before being checked by the Department for Education.

This complex process and various other factors (including the stigma associated with accessing the FSM benefit, or simply not being aware of the programme and/or how to register), means that many families don’t apply.

Even for London Boroughs, who have had access to a universal free school meals programme since 2023, the challenge remains that for schools to access Pupil Premium funding, entitled families still need to apply. This is often not happening.

The opportunity: opt-out auto-award

We’ve been helping to address this challenge by supporting councils to implement an opt-out auto-award process.

Opt-out auto-award simplifies the FSM registration process so councils can use existing data to identify and register entitled pupils. Families can still opt out if they choose, but they no longer have to apply to receive the benefit.

The same idea has worked in the UK before, in the Workplace Pension Scheme, where an opt-out model significantly improved pension uptake.

So far, we've helped five councils implement this process

Across all five local authorities, our projects have resulted in:

An additional 3,381 pupils being registered across early years, primary and secondary age groups

An additional £4,209,955 in Pupil Premium funding for schools

Additional FSM and Ever 6 funding

An opt-out auto-award process that has now been embedded in each Council’s business as usual, ensuring that children continue to be proactively identified and registered for FSM

"There's been a real genuine commitment to deliver this project and a fantastic partnership both in and out of the council. This is a really good result in this climate, and shows the benefits of this project. When Councillors have heard about the numbers and the financial benefits for our local education system, they've been blown away. Thank you for the commitment... those are magnificent numbers"

Kevin Taylor, Deputy Director of Education, Achievement and Inclusion. London Borough of Bexley.

Our lessons learnt so far

Establishing an opt-out auto-award process requires collaboration across several directorates. Whilst our approach might differ slightly, depending on the local authority we are working with, we’ve learnt some overarching lessons we’d like to share for our public service colleagues to learn from.

Getting started

Build credibility: Before you start anything, you need to demonstrate to stakeholders that this is a credible and legal process. Luckily, there is a

precedent for opt-out auto-award, with a growing community of councils who have successfully implemented it.

How? Work closely with your legal and data protection team to develop a solid legal foundation and data protection plan. This step can take a lot of

time, but is crucial and needs to be factored into your timelines.

Get the right people, in the right place, to do the right work: You need a team committed to making the project happen and to pull together to overcome obstacles. A project manager is essential to keep people on track and working towards the same goal.

In our experience, with help from subject matter expert Myles, from Bremner and Co., we’ve pulled together multi-disciplinary teams with representatives from various services (e.g. Education, Revenues and Benefits, Public Health, Transformation and Communications).

How? From the outset, bring together teams impacted by the process to outline how it could work. If it isn’t obvious who owns the work, break down

the different elements of the project and define roles and responsibilities for each. The project manager is key to coordinating this process and

holding the project together against the timelines.

Getting going

Take an agile approach. At various points in the project, you may need to adapt your process. Having short feedback loops ensures the project

doesn’t get delayed when this happens.

How? Meet frequently (once or twice a week) with the core project group to identify goals for the week ahead and any obstacles that might get in

the way.

Frequent and clear communication: stakeholders will most likely not have been involved in a similar process before and may be particularly anxious

about ensuring data-sharing protocols are in place. Additionally, while not all stakeholders have to participate in the whole project they will be needed at key moments to ensure statutory reporting deadlines are not missed. Keeping council stakeholders and schools up to date ensures that the right people have capacity to help out when you need them. In addition, when decisions are needed, you get them. Being proactive and transparent in your communications reduces the need for people to chase the project team for updates - as they’re already in the loop.

How? Send out weekly ‘End of Week Updates’ to summarise what’s been done, what’s next and any key updates. You can also hold regular ‘Show and Ask’ sessions with broader stakeholder groups to make sure everyone is up to date with the progress made.

Wrapping up

Embedding the process as business as usual: This isn’t a one-time project, but a process that you can integrate into your regular operations. Once

you’ve figured it out and implemented opt-out auto-award, the goal is to make it as easy as possible to repeat for future censuses. This process will

need to be part of your service plans to make sure that the right resources are allocated.

How? As the project progresses, document the process and reflect on areas that can be improved. When complete, review your process map, and see

where changes could be made- in the sequence of tasks, timelines or perhaps roles and responsibilities. This will help you create a clear, detailed plan and provide a good understanding of the effort and resources needed for future iterations.

Feedback from councils

"Slick, happy, coordinated team-work - like gliding swans with furiously paddling feet under the water! I certainly don’t under-estimate the huge amount of work that you’ve put into making this happen! You are an amazing team doing amazing things" Leadership Team, Southwark Council"

"This is amazing, given the complexities of a 2-tier authority, and has given the LA a much-needed boost. Thank you so much for all you have done, real system leading work that will have such an impact on so many pupils" Moira Marder, CEO, Tedd Wragg Trust.

"Well done to the team for getting this project to where it is. I could foresee that it would have struggled without effective project management as collaborating with multiple services including Benefits, Legal, Contact Centres and Children's Services was challenging and complex at times. However, the project was delivered on time and has yielded great results. Great work and schools are delighted with the outcome! Jenny Pittman, Head of Contract and Catering, Tower Hamlets Council

Interested in finding out more?

If you’d like to talk to us about auto-enrolment for free school meals, get in touch with ashlee.teakle@basis.co.uk or lindsay.cook@basis.co.uk

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