The UCAS application
To support the identification of students with individual support needs, UCAS has introduced a series of new questions into the application from 2023 entry. One of these questions enables students who are in receipt of free school meals to self-declare their circumstances:
Young people in the UK are usually eligible for free school meals if their parents or carers are on a low income or in receipt of certain benefits. If you are not sure, ask your school – they will be able to confirm this for you.
You may also be eligible if you are paid qualifying benefits directly, instead of through your parent or carer.
For more information about answering this question read our FAQs.
This question is supported by extended FAQ-style help text to clarify why we ask this question, how the student’s information will be used, and the support they may be able to access by sharing their circumstances.
Use of this question
This question has been introduced to help universities and colleges connect students who have been in receipt of free school meals to any support and information they may need to make the transition to higher education and succeed in their studies.
This question is asked in addition to the verified data we provide to universities and colleges at the point of application about FSM eligibility directly from Government sources—this covers English and Northern Irish state school pupils. As such, responses to this question are not verified by UCAS. We encourage universities and colleges to contact students directly to discuss their support needs in more detail and check eligibility for any bursaries or other support packages. UCAS expects this information will be shared with staff members responsible for arranging any support or helping students through the application and into higher education as required (e.g. the student support team, widening participation team).
Free school meals data
We’re pleased to confirm we’ve worked with the Department for Education to secure a commitment to access individual-level free school meals (FSM) data for English 18 and 19 year old applicants for applicants to the 2021and 2022 cycles. The variable supplied will be whether, at the end of key stage four, the applicant was known to be eligible for free school meals (FSM) in the previous six years.
This data will be made available alongside MEM2021 – a variant of the multiple equality measure (MEM) – which calculates the probability of your English 18 and 19 year old applicants entering higher education based on several equality factors. MEM 2021 incorporates:
- free school meals eligibility at the end of key stage four
- where applicants live, using POLAR4 data
- Income deprivation affecting children index (IDACI)
- school type
A further variant of the MEM is available for all UK domiciled applicants – this incorporates POLAR4 data, index of multiple deprivation (IMD), and school type.
HE providers that are existing modernised contextualised data service (MCDS) customers will receive the new FSM data alongside the MEM2021 supply automatically in the same file as existing data, so there is no need to sign up. If you are not an MCDS customer, simply complete our web form and you’ll receive the data within five working days.
If you have any questions, please email mcds@ucas.ac.uk.
For more information, visit our widening participation page.