More pupils on free school meals

Meals are free to families on low incomes

There has been an increase in the number of children in England's schools who are entitled to free school meals.

Almost 16% of primary and nursery school pupils are now entitled to the meals, up from 15.5% last year.

At secondary level, 13.4% of pupils are eligible and in special schools 32.1% are. Both have also shown rises according to new government figures.

Data from the government also shows a rise of one percentage point in pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds.

In total, there are now 17,370 more pupils on free school meals than last year.

The meals are free to families where parents receive benefits, or earn less than £15,575 a year.

The figures - which are for the year to January - show the first rise in four years.

They come within a pool of data being released on various school characteristics, including the ethnic background of pupils.

The proportion of children in primary schools from ethnic minorities has risen to 24.5%, from 23.3% last year.

In secondary schools, the proportion rose from 19.5% to 20.6%. Government statisticians say the changes might in part be due to an improvement in the completeness of data held by schools, because there has been a fall in the percentage of pupils unclassified according to their ethnic group in both primary and secondary schools.

Schools minister Jim Knight said: "The language of instruction in English schools is and always has been English - this is vital in boosting community cohesion.

"The task is to get every child up to speed in English so that they can access the whole curriculum."

Teachers

Separate figures published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families show there are 3,400 fewer full time teachers now, with a total of 431,400 currently working in maintained schools.

But separately the government lists 3,600 extra full-time teachers or their part-time equivalents working in Academies and city technology colleges in England.

There has been a rise in the number of support staff (or full-time equivalents) in state schools, which are up by 15,600 to 338,000 in the year to January.

Within this, the number of teaching assistants (FTE) rose by 5,400 to 130,600.

Pupil to teacher ratios remain broadly the same, with one teacher for every 21.4 pupils in primaries and one teacher for every 15.9 pupils in secondaries.

Mr Knight said: "In these challenging economic times, people are seeing teaching and support staff positions in schools as increasingly appealing options, in part due to the attractive financial rewards put in place, but also due to the tremendous personal rewards that go with them."