More than a quarter of Wirral's school children can now get free school meals in a sign of just how hard COVID-19 has hit family incomes.

Children become eligible for free school meals if their parent or carer receives income support or Universal Credit, with a household income of less than £7,400 a year.

Before the pandemic, in January 2020, 21.5% of Wirral's school children could get free school meals.

In the latest figures, which go up to January of this year, 25.1% of the borough's school children were entitled to free school meals.

This means that in total 12,768 Wirral pupils can now receive free schools meals, an increase of nearly 2,000 (1,907) since last year.

This year's figure is the highest since comparable figures were first published in 2016, when just 8,459 school children in the borough were eligible.

The numbers had been steadily rising in the years leading up to the pandemic, but the rise between January 2020 and January 2021 was much bigger than anything we have seen before.

After a slight reduction in 2017, the number of eligible children rose to 8,542 in 2018, 9,804 in 2019 and 10,879 in 2020.

But almost half of the huge rise in the number of Wirral's children eligible for free school meals since 2016 occurred this year.

A rise of 1,907 pupils is by far the greatest year-on-year rise we have seen so far.

Wirral's rate of free school meals entitlement, 25.1%, is higher than the national average of 20.8%.

But the national figure itself is significantly higher than last year, when 17.3% of pupils were eligible.