Job redundancies during the recession have been blamed for the first annual increase in three years in the number of children eligible for free meals, with a rise from 15.5 per cent to 15.9 per cent in nursery and primary schools.
Children are eligible for free meals if their families have an income, including benefits, below £16,000 per year.
Tim Nichols, press and parliamentary liaison officer for the Child Poverty Action Group, said that he was not surprised that more families are qualifying for free school meals with 'unemployment growing in the recession'.
He added, 'The Government must ensure that families newly reliant on benefits have access to expert advice on the support they are entitled to so that take-up of free school meals and other benefits is as high as possible.'
He said that an urgent recession survival package to keep families afloat, and to ensure progress continues to be made on child poverty, is needed from the Chancellor this autumn.
The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that 20 per cent of children entitled to free school meals do not take them because of the social stigma that is attached to them.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families called it 'absolutely vital that families eligible for free school meals claim their entitlement - they are the families that need the most support financially and children that most need good, healthy lunches.'
He added, 'The School Food Trust has a long-running campaign to advise schools and local authorities to make the process as easy as possible and reduce the stigma for children claiming.'
Children's minister Dawn Primarolo said, 'We're determined not to abandon communities to long-term unemployment and risk generations of families falling into and staying in poverty.'
The 2009 school census, which is based on school rolls in January, also showed that nearly one in four pupils of compulsory school age comes from a minority ethnic group.
According to the figures from the Department of Health, in primary schools, 15.2 per cent of pupils speak English as a second language, up from 14.3 per cent last year, while the percentage of ethnic minority pupils in primary schools has gone up from 23.3 per cent to 24.5 per cent.
Tower Hamlets borough in London has the highest number of primary school pupils who speak English as a second language (78 per cent). In Cornwall the figure is 1.3 per cent.
