Schools - Transactions

Free school meals

FSM for P6 & P7 pupils

The Scottish Government had planned to expand universal free school meal provision to Primary 6 and Primary 7 pupils, as they currently do for P1-P5. Due to financial constraints this is not yet possible, and instead they will fund free school meals for children in P6 & P7 whose parents are in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment.

This is in addition to the existing income-based entitlement, so any families already in receipt of FSM will not need to reapply.

As per the existing universal provision in P1-P5, this will be for free school meals ONLY – they will not be entitled to any holiday payments or a clothing grant.

We are developing an application form which will go live in early February, and we’ll be sending a communication to all parents about this. Entitlement will be recorded on SEEMiS but it will be separate from the current FSM approval.

We’ll provide more detailed information nearer the time.

Applications for 2025-2026 session

In past years we’ve seen parents start to apply for their children starting P1 in August. It is too early to apply as applications do not open for the next session until June. If you do provide info to the parents of your registered children, please advise not to apply just yet – many families who qualify will receive an automatic award and will not need to apply.

P1/S1 intake update

P1 enrolment update

The deadline for P1 registrations was 24 December, however the registration form will remain open for late registrations and placing requests. This means you may have some new enrolments to verify and register.

The Intake working group will be meeting on 16 January to decide on the intake limits for each school, so it is important we have as many enrolments completed as possible so we can report accurate figures.

Click here to download the P1 enrolment and registration guidance.

Registrations not verified or progressed to ‘registered’

If you have not yet verified or registered enrolments because there is an issue, i.e., address proofs not sufficient or not provided yet, please contact the parents again to request this. Any child enrolment not progressed to ‘registered’ will not be included in the registration figures we report to the intakes working group.

Remember you don’t need to request proof of address if the parent declared they are liable for Council Tax. Similarly, a birth certificate is not required if the child attends a CEC nursery setting (i.e. they can be matched to a nursery record).

If you find you get stuck and unable to progress a registration, we suggest you contact us to ‘reset’ the enrolment to ‘pending’ and then you can try again.

Access to the system will be restricted after 19 January as we begin the admissions process.

Admission to Roman Catholic schools

Priority will be given to children baptised in the Roman Catholic faith.  

For children declared as baptised RC, they will only receive priority if the certificate has been provided and approved on the system. Please review any you are waiting for and if necessary, send a follow up request.

S1 school places update

We check a report on SEEMiS for P7 pupils detailing any new starts or changes, i.e., new addresses, so you don't need to tell us about these separately. In most cases we'll check against Council Tax records to confirm the address and then change the allocated school automatically.

We are working through the address changes and letters will be issued shortly to the parents confirming the allocated place. We’ll also allocate places to any new children who enrolled after the end of October.

Next update

We’ll post our next update in February with information on intake limits, and more information on the FSM rollout for P6 & P7 pupils.

If you have any enquiries, please use our contact form.