Budget 2013: School breakfasts could be served all week

Triplets (from left) Kawa, Noah and Kingi Grey have been happy members of the Malfroy School Breakfast Club in Rotorua. Photo / APN

A school breakfast programme run by Fonterra and Sanitarium may be extended to five days a week with extra Government support from the Budget.

Prime Minister John Key confirmed yesterday that the Government was talking to Fonterra, Sanitarium and the KidsCan charity about a food-in-schools package to be unveiled in the next few weeks.

Fonterra social responsibility manager Carly Robinson said her company and Sanitarium were talking to "a number of people" about extending their Kickstart breakfast scheme, run in 575 schools in the four lowest-income deciles, from two mornings a week at present to five days.

"The feedback we are consistently getting from the schools is that they are all trying to stretch it out beyond two days, so we have been looking at something we can do to improve this programme, and who can work with us to do it," she said.

"They also need not just milk and Weet-Bix, they need bowls and spoons - there is a whole programme. So absolutely it's a hot topic and we are talking with people about what we can do."

KidsCan chief executive Julie Chapman said this week that she had also been talking with officials and with Social Development Minister Paula Bennett about whether to renew or increase a Government grant of $150,000 a year to her programme.

It provides bread, muesli bars and other food for teachers to give to hungry children during the school day in 330 schools, also in the four poorest deciles.

Ms Robinson said the Kickstart programme cost in the order of $1 a breakfast and provided about one million breakfasts a year.

"To extend it to five days a week would cost roughly double that."

Fonterra is also spending $10 million to $20 million a year on free milk for every primary school in the country that wants it.

Simon Collins