FSM Eligibility Checker User Guide

Once you have logged in via the "Administrator" button and selected your school, you should be able to access details of eligibility checks related to your school.  Please note that in order to see data, you must have the correct permissions which are assigned by the Head as described in the FSM services administrators section.

The page consists of a set of panels, each of which can be closed, if you have no wish to see the information inside all the time.

Inside the Information panel, you will see a summary of incomplete data that has been received from your school.

The number shown indicated contacts that do not have mobile numbers when exported from your school's MIS.

Any contact that does not have a mobile number will be unable to complete the entire linking process.

Should you wish to fill in the missing information, click the Show details button to obtain a list, then enter their mobile number into the MIS. Any new information will be processed in the data export that should be coming from your school every evening.

The outcome of all checks made online by parents are available to the school in the Reports section of the page.

There are two tabs in which the details are shown.

The first tab titled "Full details of FSM eligibility checks" lists all pupils and parents where the parent has successfully linked their own account with the account of the child(ren) attending your school.

The second tab, "FSM eligibility checks for children not matched to school data" also shows valid results from eligibility checks conducted by parents.

The main difference is that it was not possible to match the pupils shown in the second tab with data received from the school. If you recognise these pupils as belonging to the school, applications can still be processed as normal. This does not affect the eligibility check providing valid data to the school.

Click the Submit button to attempt a re-match to happen.

This sends a request to the FSM Support Team to see if a match can be made. In some instances, this is simple but at other times, the data submitted by the parent and the data provided by the school are completely dissimilar.

In such cases, a match cannot be confirmed and certain pupils will remain in the "unmatched" report.

A Nominated Contact from the school is welcome to contact the Service Desk by raising a case to obtain advice on how such cases can be resolved.

You may find a very long list of parents who have done online eligibility check. Since the ones of interest are those that are eligible, you can easily sort the list using the filters available in the column headings. The column headings should look as shown below to allow sorting:

If you do not see the sorting options, enable them by clicking on the filter icon.

If you have a long list of eligibility check results that are not relevant to you, you can hide the ones you no longer wish to display.

When viewing the eligibility results column (titled "Eligible?") you will generally see Yes or No. In some instances, where the check was done before 1 April 2018, you may see the response "No Trace - Check data". Such a person would have originally been found not eligible as a result of some incorrect information being entered. You will not see such a status for anyone whose first check is done after 1 April 2018.

If any entries have been hidden, you can display them again by clicking the amber "Show hidden applications" button.

Rows that were previously hidden will appear highlighted on a red background. You can then use the tickboxes on the left to permanently un-hide some hidden rows or to add more rows to those being hidden. Use the green button once the relevant selections have been made.

To hide the information click on the amber button again which should now read "Hide hidden applications"

Once a parent has done an online eligibility check, their details will be stored in the system. This means that it becomes possible for the school's system administrator to re-check their eligibility status periodically.

Re-checks are run in bulk and can be done as frequently as required. Depending on the number of people being checked, this takes a little while and you will be notified by email when the results are available.

Click the Run New Check button and initiate the process.

Please note that doing a re-check will check every single parent that has ever done a check or has had an initial check done on their behalf by an administrator.

Re-check results

When the re-check results are available, the only ones shown by default will be those where the status has changed. This effectively means that if no changes have been highlighted since the previous check, your results list will be completely blank.

Initially, you will only see changes. If you wish to view all the parents details, you can do so by unticking the box shown below:

Please note that it is possible that after running a recheck on checks originally done before 1 April 2018, some of those who were originally found as "not eligible" may now show a status of "No Trace - Check data" as it is likely some of the information provided originally was incorrect. Such results can be hidden if you do not wish to see them.

You can also view a history of a specific previous eligibility check by selecting a date from the menu instead of viewing all previous checks.

The full results of the latest check will, by default, by shown in the panel titled "Reports", which is the panel above the one containing the re-checks.

Using the last column on the right, you will be able to tell whether a parent's details were in fact re-checked or whether the essential information needed to do so was missing.

Please be aware that on rare occasions, re-checking a particular parent's eligibility won't be possible. In such instances, the parent's "last checked" date won't change.

This is due to compliance with data protection legislation as each parent can choose to remove their saved National Insurance number or Asylum Seeker's number from the system. When this information is not available, a recheck can't be done.

You can encourage the parent to do a re-check themselves via the site, where they will need to supply the relevant details again, or you can offer to do it for them, if they provide you with the relevant details.