Free school meals in Bromyard area
Case reference FOI2022/00217
Published 2 March 2022
Request
Would it be possible to get the number of children having free school meals in the Bromyard ward/area. Also are you able to confirm if Bromyard is in the bottom 25% for Deprivation in Herefordshire. If you know the exact percentage that would be even better.
Response
Bromyard has two distinct wards: Bromyard West and Bromyard Bringsty.
According to the last school census return (Autumn 21) , collected on 7th Oct 2021, there were 632 children attending maintained schools in Herefordshire who were domicile across both Bromyard wards.
Of these, 107 children were recorded as eligible and claiming free school meals, which equates to 16.9% of the cohort.
This compares to 16.0% of the whole school population across all wards.
The ward of Bromyard West has a greater percentage of children eligible (18.2%) than Bromyard Bringsty (14.5%)
Neither ward would feature in the top 25% of wards in Herefordshire if you used FSM eligibility as an indicator of deprivation.
Data published in the national statistics release "Schools, pupils and their characteristics: January 2021" shows that across England at this time, 20.8% of pupils were eligible to free school meals. A link to this data can be found below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2021
I have also included a ward profile for both Bromyard West and Bromyard Bringsty which will offer some further insight into both areas. Bringsty for example has a greater percentage of economically active residents than Bromyard West - supporting the findings above.
Documents
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