It is a possible for a school's administrator to perform an eligibility check on behalf of a parent, provided all the necessary information is available.
To do this, log into the Administration side as usual and select the option Apply on behalf of a parent from the Admin menu.
To do the check, first select your school to move on.
You will now need to enter the parent's basic details which include date of birth and NI/NASS number. A check cannot be processed without these.
The check will be done immediately after you click the Submit button and the result will be available immediately on-screen.
You will need to confirm whether the parent wishes to receive free meals should they be eligible (the answer is "yes" by default).
If you want to be able to save the parent's details so you can do a quick re-check of their status in future, you must also enter the name of their child before clicking Submit.
Please be aware that if your check results in a different response rather than a straightforward Yes or No, the parent's details will not be saved for later use. If you wish to do re-check for a person whose response was one of the below, you would have to do it again from the beginning, by inputting all the details. The following responses are possible:
•The DfE's response indicates that it is not possible to provide a final result for this eligibility check, as not all of the information needed is yet available to them. This issue should be resolved within 4-6 weeks. Please re-run this check after this period has elapsed.
•The DfE's response indicates that it is not possible to determine your eligibility status automatically. You will need to provide documents including proof of household earnings in order that a check can be performed manually.
•Sorry, but the entered values could not be matched to any living person listed in UK Government records. Please double-check your details then try again.
•The DfE's response indicates that it is not possible to determine your eligibility status automatically. You will need to raise a query manually.
You can perform this check for as many parents as required. At the end of a check click the "Restart the check process..." button.
See next:
Viewing eligibility check results
The checking process from the parent's viewpoint
