Hundreds of pupils 'benefitting' from free meals

Middlesbrough pupils are now automatically enrolled if they are entitled to free meals

More than 600 children have benefited from a scheme helping families claim free school meals, a town's mayor has said.

A new system was launched in September to automatically enrol pupils who were entitled to free meals in Middlesbrough.

Labour mayor Chris Cooke told BBC Politics North the scheme could save families an estimated £400 a year.

The government said tackling child poverty was a "priority" and it planned to offer free breakfast clubs to every primary school pupil.

Cooke said early data suggested the scheme had also generated £800,000 in extra cash for local schools, because Pupil Premium funding was given out based on the number of pupils getting free lunches.

"Councils and other bodies have so much data on people, they have the ability to work out what benefits they should be claiming," he said.

"So just using the data we already had, we are able to enrol people on the free school meals system," Cooke added.

Middlesbrough mayor Chris Cooke said the scheme could save families £400 a year

Parents can opt out if they do not want their children to have free meals.

The mayor said it made life easier for families that did not know they qualified or had not been able to apply online.

Durham County Council and Redcar and Cleveland Council have also introduced auto-enrolment schemes.

But unions leaders and politicians have been campaigning for the government to go further and introduce universal free school meals across all primary schools.

Speaking at an event at Lambton School in Washington, National Education Union (NEU) leader Daniel Kebede said primary school children in Wales and London got free school meals.

He said: "It's quite simply not fair that the children of Keir Starmer's constituency in Camden get free school meals, but the children of Washington don't."

The NEU wants all primary school children to get free meals

The NEU campaign has been backed by the Labour MP for Washington and Gateshead South, Sharon Hodgson.

She said making it universal would take the stigma away from children who currently got free meals.

"I was a free school meal kid, I got them from the minute I started to the minute I left," she said.

She said: "I loved school food. But I was very aware that I was different from other kids.

"So the government need to be looking at this."

The government said its free breakfast club scheme would make sure primary school children started the day with a "full stomach ready to learn".

It also said it had set up a child poverty taskforce "looking at longer-term actions to increase household income and bring down essential costs".

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