Wide range between wards in Leeds: Pupils eligible for free school meals
Pupils eligible for free school meals (2025/26) varies within Leeds: from 5.7% in Harewood to 53.1% in Burmantofts & Richmond Hill, across 33 wards. The upper tenth of wards is 34.7 percentage points above the lower tenth.
Burmantofts & Richmond Hill figure
How do we know this?
- Source
- Department for Education (Get Information about Schools) via WhatSchool data: Establishment records, pupil numbers, FSM, SEN, absence; Ofsted outcomes (Open Government Licence v3.0 (DfE Get Information about Schools and Ofsted data, via WhatSchool))
- Period
- 2025/26
- Geography
- Ward, compared with lowest-value ward (Harewood)
- Method
- Pupil-weighted school measures. FSM, SEN and absence percentages are school-level figures averaged with school roll (January 2026 census) as the weight; KS2 and KS4 measures are averaged with the number of eligible pupils (KS2) or the KS4 cohort as the weight. This equals the share of pupils in the area's schools, not of pupils living in the area. The England value uses the same method on the same files and is the comparator. Suppressed school values are skipped, so coverage differs by measure (the number of schools used is in the notes). Ofsted outcomes are the latest overall grade on record at 31 August 2026; schools inspected under the new report-card framework may carry no single grade.
- Limitations
- Ward and neighbourhood boundaries differ in size; the range shows variation within the area, not a ranking of places.