The impacts of Universal Free School Meal schemes in England - Dr Angus Holford and Professor Birgitta Rabe

4 | The impacts of UFSM schemes in England | Summary Full report: The impacts of Universal Free School Meal schemes in England 1 Introduction In all cases, we identify the impact of offering free lunches on a universal basis, not the impact of actually taking up the meals. [...] UFSM is offered across the impacts of local authorities’ own UFSM schemes allows Scotland for children in the first five years of primary school, us to a) investigate the longer-run effects of providing free intended to be rolled out to all children in primary school in meals to all children, b) evaluate the impact on children at Wales by 2024, and for the 2023/24 academic year is available older. [...] the Newham pilot were to ‘test the impacts of extended Newham’s continuation of the scheme was to support entitlement on pupils’ eating habits at school and at home; ‘significant numbers of families living in poverty, but who did pupils’ Body Mass Index (BMI) and general health and 6 | The impacts of UFSM schemes in England | Full report: The impacts of Universal Free School Meal schemes in Englan. [...] markedly higher levels of disadvantage, as measured by The key assumption of this method is of parallel trends: means-tested FSM eligibility and by the Income Deprivation That the change in outcomes in the control group is a good Affecting Children Index than the rest of London and guide to what the change in outcomes would have been England. [...] The difference between the observed outcomes (Department of Communities and Local Government, 2010), of treated children and their outcomes as predicted using the suggests a 47 percentage point rise in take-up.7 This is similar data on non-treated children in the Borusyak estimator is the to the 50 percentage point rise among not-FSM-eligible 6 Specifically, primary school take-up of school meals.