Free School Meals Expansion: Tier Support in Synergy

The DfE's Eligibility Checking Engine (ECE) now returns a new Tier field alongside the existing eligibility status for Free School Meals checks. Sites can begin checking eligibility now, ahead of the funding changes coming into effect in September 2026.

The Tier distinguishes between two cohorts:

The Tier is only returned by the ECE when the result is eligible. A not eligible result carries no Tier, and Synergy handles this gracefully — no errors will be shown on records without a Tier.

Note - the Tier and Expanded cohort are 'visible' in the ECE as of 01 June 2026. This means that families under the Expanded cohort are visible to you now, even in earlier versions of Synergy. This means that some applicants will be showing as just 'Eligible' without the additional context. Until you apply the (early) June release (v26.15), we advise performing checks manually via the Eligibility Checking website and DfE sign in.

When an ECE check is carried out on a family — whether via Synergy Web or the batch process — the Tier returned is stored against the ECE check history and cascaded through to the family FSM Status record.

On the Family record, the Tier is visible in three places:

When recording an Allowed/Eligible FSM Status manually on a family record, you are now required to also select a Tier. The available values are Targeted and Expanded. The Tier field is enabled and mandatory whenever an eligible status is selected, and will be disabled and cleared if a not eligible status is chosen.

If the Tier changes for a Family but they remain Eligible, or when you receive a Tier for the first time for an existing Eligible family, a new status record will be created, but preserving the start date.

The Tier cascades to child FSM status records in the same way as the FSM Status itself — using your existing matrix and cascade configuration. No changes to your system setup are needed for this to work.

If the ECE returns a result where the FSM Status has not changed but the Tier has (for example, a family moves from Targeted to Expanded), Synergy will create a new FSM Status History record to capture the change, at both family and child level. The start date is preserved.

Personal indicators: The FSM Eligibility PI continues to show eligibility for a meal as it does today. The Tier is accessible by double-clicking into the indicator detail in Synergy Client modules. Where you need to distinguish between cohorts, use the query screens or reporting rather than PI.

The Tier is displayed on the Common Child FSM Status History, accessible via Personal Indicators and from within the child record in FSMB. Where a user has permission to edit FSM details, the Tier field is available for manual entry when the FSM eligibility is set to an Allowed/Eligible value.

Existing history records that pre-date the expansion will not show a Tier value — this is expected and will not cause any errors.

When a parent applies for FSM via Synergy Web and an ECE check is performed automatically on submission, the Tier returned is now stored against the FSM import record. It is visible on the individual import record in FSMB > Family/Pupils Import, displayed alongside the existing Status field in the FSM Check section.

The batch ECE process now retrieves, stores, and applies the Tier field. When batch results are processed, the Tier is updated on each eligible family record. As with individual checks, if the Tier has changed but the Status has not, a new FSM History record is created at both family and child level to preserve the audit trail.

Change in behaviour: The FSM Batch Status Update screen no longer allows you to select an Allowed/Eligible status. Because the Tier cannot be determined during a bulk manual update, it is not possible to set an eligible status this way. If you need to set or change the Tier alongside an eligible status, this must be done on individual family records.

Two improvements have been made to how batches are submitted to the ECE to handle larger re-check volumes:

If the ECE returns a Too Many Requests (429) response during batch submission, Synergy will now wait one minute and automatically retry that batch, up to three times. If all three retries fail, only that batch is marked as errored — the rest of the queue continues to process unaffected. Each retry attempt is recorded against the batch record.

Following changes in 2025 to use the ECE, you no longer need to select cohorts of records for batch submission like you had to with the ECS.

If you have 20,000 records to check, you can query for these in FSMB, and submit them all for checking via the Eligibility Checker button in the toolbar. Synergy will then 'chunk' the batch into smaller batches per the batch size above.

For example, 20,000 record cohort at 750 per batch means 27 batches would be created and processed. At 5,000 per batch, 4 batches would be created.

You can monitor the progress of the Batch submission and associated 'Fetch' tasks via Synergy Web > Admin > Automated Task Manager.

Note - the process of submitting and checking a batch also applies to FIS EYPP and Working Family checks.

The Family Query Dialog has been updated to support filtering by Tier. When you select an Allowed/Eligible FSM Status in the Family tab, a Tier filter becomes available. You can:

The Tier is also displayed as a column in the Family List view, to the right of the Family FSM Status column.

The same Tier filtering capability has been added to the FSMB tab of the Child Enquiry Query Dialog. You can filter for children by Tier when an Allowed/Eligible FSM Eligibility Description is selected, and find children with no Tier recorded for eligible records.

Schools using the SAM FSM View can now see Tier information for each child and filter their cohort by Tier.

Schools can filter the view by Tier — options are Targeted, Expanded, and No Tier set. All new and renamed columns are included in the Excel download from the SAM FSM View.

Letter templates in FSMB now include new merge fields for FSM Tier. These are available in the following letter types:

Where a family or pupil does not have a Tier recorded, these fields return blank without error.

To tailor the wording of a letter based on whether a family is Targeted or Expanded — for example, to explain that Expanded families are not eligible for passported benefits — you can use Word's if/then/else conditional field logic in your template. No changes to your system configuration or FSM Status matrix are needed.

The FSM application outcome page in Synergy Web has been updated to replace the legacy "Found" / "Not Found" wording with clear, plain-language result labels. Where the ECE returns an eligible result, the Tier is shown alongside it — for example, Eligible (Targeted) or Eligible (Expanded).

The wording shown to parents on the outcome page is configurable in Content Manager under the ECE Checks group and the Free School Meals Eligibility Check Page group, allowing you to describe what Targeted and Expanded mean in terms that work for your families and schools. Default text is provided for each outcome:

To customise the wording, navigate to Content Manager > ECE Checks and update the relevant content items.

Early Years applications: The same outcome page update also applies to the Early Years Application ECE check results page.

Synergy's built-in transport eligibility logic has been updated to consider only the Targeted cohort when assessing FSM-related transport entitlement. Families with an Expanded FSM Tier are not treated as FSM-eligible for the purpose of the Batch Calculate Transport Eligibility process.

This is consistent with DfE policy — Targeted FSM acts as a passport to benefits including free home-to-school transport in qualifying circumstances, whereas Expanded FSM does not carry this passport status.