Schools transactions update 19 December 2023
Read to find out about FSM Christmas payments, plus an update on P1 enrolment known issues.
Free school meals Christmas payments
The Christmas holiday payment is £27.50 per child. Payments were made between 11 and 15 December 2023, and there will be regular mop-up payments to capture any newly awarded children.
As always, these payments are made if the child currently receives income-based free school meals – so they do not need to apply for it. We use the same details we used to pay their clothing grant.
Our web page has been updated with this information.
P1 enrolment update
Since P1 registrations opened on 31 October, 3,768 children have been successfully registered. We want to thank you all for your work on these, as we all adjust to the new system. We’ve received lots of feedback, and we will review it all after the 2024 intake.
We work closely with the develop to report and resolve any issues as they arise. Please note the following:
Template emails
A reminder to everyone to add your own school admin email address and update the footer with the school name, address and contact number.
RC uploads
We advised in the last blog post how to deal with baptised RC children. We are aware that some schools have been uploading the email replies from parents and are concerned they may be counted as baptised RC children. The developer has advised that only RC certificate document uploads which have been APPROVED will be counted, therefore if you’ve uploaded an email confirming the child is not baptised, please REJECT these uploads.
Please refer to page 33 of the manual: Verified – Check Documentation for guidance on approving and rejecting documentation.
Unable to progress enrolments to ‘registered’ status
Some schools report being unable to progress certain enrolments to ‘registered’ status. In these cases, we can ‘reset’ the enrolment to pending and in most cases, you should then be able to proceed to ‘verified’ and then ‘registered’. If you have already sent us an enquiry we’ll confirm when we’ve reset it for you, otherwise please submit a contact form for each affected child and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
And finally…
This is the last blog post of 2023, so all that's left is to thank you all for your help with our processes. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year!