The number of children receiving free school meals has jumped ‘significantly’ in the past 12 months, as the economic downturn bites even into the classroom.

And the number of children from ethnic minorities, or who speak English as a second language, is also on the rise in the 2011 census of education.

Almost one in five children in primary schools across Britain now come from families whose collective income is low enough – around £16,000 a year – to trigger the free school meals allowance, which is paid for by local authorities.

In parts of the West the figure is even higher, and even in supposedly affluent spots like Somerset and Gloucestershire, the figure is still almost one child in eight. Only in Wiltshire are fewer than ten per cent of children claiming free school meals. Across the board, there was an increase in free school meal take up from 2007 to 2011, with more than 18.5 per cent of pupils in primary schools, and 16 per cent of secondary school pupils eligible. Tens of thousands more pupils are now on the benefit and, while the figure has been rising steadily in the past four years, the jump from 2010 to this year has been the biggest.

Education analysts said that may have something to do with new funding rules for schools. The Government’s Pupil Premium scheme sees schools get paid extra money for pupils who claim free school meals, have English as a second language, or come from military families – and one teaching union said there was anecdotal evidence of a drive by school administrators to trawl through pupil databases and urge parents to sign up for free school meals.

The numbers of children in schools whose mother tongue is not English is also on the rise, with one in eight pupils learning English as a second language. In the West, only Bristol schools report a number higher than the national average, although in Swindon, the figure is 10.9 per cent.

In the West, the figure is well below the national average, with 1.8 per cent of pupils in Dorset not learning English first, and the rest of the West at around three per cent. But classrooms from Gloucestershire to Exmoor are getting more ethnically diverse with the percentage of pupils coming from ‘non-white British’ backgrounds going over ten per cent in Gloucestershire for the first time. More than one in four children in Bristol are not white, and more than one in six in Swindon. Stereotypically ‘white’ places like Wiltshire are becoming more diverse, with 7.3 per cent of pupils being counted as non-white British.

Brian Lightman, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, warned that extra funding for children who have English as a second language had been cut, with the new funding formula opening the possibility of local authorities siphoning off money destined for those pupils.

“Support for these pupils is vitally important,” he said. “These children are just as able as other pupils but they’ll fail to access the curriculum if they are behind in literacy and linguistic skills.”