The Policy and ECE Change
From September 2026, all families in receipt of Universal Credit will become eligible for free school meals, expanding the cohort beyond the current income threshold of £7,400. Families below that threshold will retain their existing entitlement to wider passported benefits (such as pupil premium and home-to-school transport). Families above the income threshold but in receipt of Universal Credit form the new expanded cohort. The DfE's Eligibility Checking Engine (ECE) will introduce a ‘Tier’ field – returning either "targeted" or "expanded" – to distinguish between these two groups.
The new Tier data item was made available in the ECE Test instance on 06 May 2026, and is expected in Production from 01 June 2026.
What will Synergy support?
We have been working across several areas of the system to reflect this change, and we walked through these in detail during the session:
ECE check results will display the Tier (Targeted or Expanded) alongside the existing check status, both on the family record and in the full check history;
Family and child status records will store the Tier whenever an ‘Allowed’ status is set, and this will propagate through to child FSM status records using existing matrix/cascade logic – no changes to your system configuration are needed;
If ever recording an 'Allowed' status manually, you will be required to set the Tier.
The list of children ‘attached’ to a FSMB Family record will show the Tier;
The child update confirmation dialogue (the pop-up that shows which children are being updated when you save a family status) will also display the Tier.
Personal indicators will continue to work as they do today – showing eligibility for a meal – with the Tier visible by double-clicking into the indicator detail in Synergy Client modules;
We discussed this approach with the group and the consensus was that a separate indicator per tier is not warranted; the Tier is accessible via on screen viewing, querying for cohorts or reporting instead where this level of distinction is required.
The SAM (Schools Access Module) online view for schools will show the Tier for eligible children, allowing schools to query their cohort by Tier directly;
The family query and child query screens will be extended to let you search and filter by Tier;
The batch check process will handle and store the Tier in the same way as individual checks, processing these in line with cascade logic expectations;
Our built-in Transport Eligibility logic within Synergy Admissions and the new Evo Transport modules will be updated to consider only the targeted cohort when assessing FSM-related transport entitlement, in line with policy.
New requirements captured during the user session
Synergy Web (Online Applications)
For those using Synergy Web for citizen-based FSM applications, we took feedback on how LAs would prefer this to be updated to show the Tier and an explanation of what it means for parents after a check is performed, so that parents in the Expanded cohort in particular can be told that they do not qualify for 'passported' benefits such as Transport.
Our intention is to update the wording towards something clearer, such as "eligible" with the tier shown alongside it, e.g. Eligible (Targeted) or Eligible (Expanded). We will also provide configurable text so that you can describe what Targeted and Expanded mean in terms that work for your families and schools.
FSMB Mail merge
Letter templates in FSMB will gain a new mail merge field for Tier, and you will be able to use conditional wording (if-then-else logic in templates) to tailor the content of your letters depending on whether a family is in the Targeted or Expanded cohort.
Re-checking your existing cohort
Many authorities raised questions about how to approach the bulk re-check ahead of September, alongside encouraging parents to apply online. A few important points:
When you submit a batch check for a large cohort, Synergy chunks the records automatically (currently into batches of 250) and monitors the results in the background, so you do not need to manually manage multiple batch submissions.
We are reviewing this in line with DfE specs and aiming to increase the batch size.
We are investigating a reported issue where larger batch runs return API overload errors after the third batch. If you have experienced this, please raise a support ticket so we can look into it.
We have since investigated this and confirmed that Synergy needs a change to better handle multiple batch submission.
We are also in discussion with the DfE around behaviour of the ECE in regards to batch submission, as we cannot currently successfully test the typical volume of records/batches that would be required.
You can use the family query screen to find your eligible cohort and submit a batch from there. For families where the child is eligible but the family status differs, the query screen does allow you to combine family and child status criteria.
Transitional protection statuses, introduced last year, are honoured by the batch update logic. If you have not yet adopted the transitional protection status functionality and are still managing these cases via the ‘ignore’ checkbox, you will need to review and change this ahead of the September rollout.
No recourse to Public Funds
Some LAs are recording No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) families in Synergy using the ignore FSM checkbox and a manual status. We discussed this in the session and we would encourage you to review how those families are recorded before running a bulk recheck. We will be looking at how Synergy can better support NRPF recording as part of our longer-term reimagining of the FSM module.