School meals statistical bulletins
The following statistical bulletins contain information on school meals for all grant-aided schools in Northern Ireland. These bulletins are usually published in April each year.
Format Change Notice – School Meal Uptake Statistics
From 1 April 2026, School Meal Uptake statistical releases are now published in HTML format to improve accessibility and user experience.
As part of this improvement, we have converted and replaced the previously published PDF versions for the 2022/23 and 2024/25 releases with equivalent HTML versions. The original PDFs remain available for reference.
Background
The data is usually collected in October each year for all grant-aided schools in Northern Ireland. The information available includes data on uptake of school meals and of free school meals. The analyses include information presented by school sector and school management.
This is an Official Statistics publication. Official statistics are produced to high professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Data
Data relating to each of the year's listed may be accessed by clicking on the link for that year.
- School meals 2025/26 – Suspended
- School meals 2024/25
- School meals 2023/24 – Suspended
- School meals 2022/23
- School meals 2021/22 - Suspended
- School meals 2020/21
- School meals 2019/20
- School meals 2018/19
- School meals 2017/18
- School meals 2016/17
- School meals 2015/16
- School meals 2014/15
- School meals 2013/14
- School meals 2012/13
- School meals 2011/12
- School meals 2010/11
Further information
More information is available on the following DE page:
Data requests
If you require information that is additional to that already published, contact the Statistics and Research Team (SRT). We will conduct special analysis of data held upon request, where it is appropriate.
Review of school meals uptake statistics
Statistics and Research Team within the Department recently reviewed this data collection and the related statistical outputs. The review report is available at the following link: