The free school lunches programme has drawn on special Covid recovery funds for another two and a half years. Photo / George Novak
By Dr Lisa Te Morenga, Co-Chair of Health Coalition Aotearoa
Kate MacNamara’s 16 May article Cost of free school lunches a hungry hole in Budget 2023 leaves a bad smell in our lunch boxes.
She argues that Ka Ora, Ka Ako should only go to those children who experience food insecurity because it costs too much money and the evidence doesn’t support a universal approach.
Health Coalition Aotearoa believes all children should flourish and we completely reject the notion that the wellbeing of our poorest children should be sacrificed to save a few dollars. There is a wealth of international evidence to show that singling out poor kids to receive free school meals reduces uptake because of the shame and stigma those kids feel. The result is worse outcomes in learning and health.
We also reject MacNamara’s assertion that there’s no New Zealand evidence to show that providing a nutritious meal has a positive impact on enrolment, attendance, completion, and learning and that “international evidence is quite mixed.”
These are sweeping claims that misrepresent local and international data and fail to capture the benefits for everyone.
The recent evaluation of Ka Ora Ka Ako shows clear, substantive value of the progamme. While the greatest benefits were seen among the kids facing the highest levels of food insecurity, diet quality has been significantly improved in all kids receiving free school lunches, even the better-off kids. They are eating more healthy fruit and vegetables, and fewer snacks, sweets and cheap but filling foods like instant noodles that are high in salt, sugar and saturated fat but little else. Ensuring our kids develop a liking for healthy nutritious foods sets them up for a healthy, productive life. A dollar spent today is many dollars saved in the future.
It’s also simply untrue that Ka Ora, Ka Ako has failed to demonstrate a positive impact on learning. Gains have been shown in school functioning (ability to remember, pay attention, and keep up in class) and social functioning (getting along with others). These factors are important for engagement and learning.
In addition the evaluation reported important improvements in most markers of wellbeing among all learners receiving free school lunches, but especially in those with most food insecurity. We have seen increased mental, physical, emotional and social functioning, as well as improved focus and engagement for all learners.
Yes it’s true that there’s unclear evidence on attendance, but it’s important to note that the evaluation could only compare attendance rates for schools getting free lunches – that is the 25 per cent highest needs schools – with slightly better off schools, so we would expect a whole range of other challenging circumstances to be factoring into the equation.
Health Coalition Aotearoa wants to see Ka Ora, Ka Ako expanded because there are children going hungry in schools that are currently not eligible. Providing healthy school lunches to all children, regardless of whether they need it or not, is manaakitanga. The programme reduces financial stresses at home, improves the school environment and fosters social inclusion for all kids. Everyone eating the same food normalises the meals and enhances the acceptability of new nutritious foods. In short, the Ka Ora, Ka Ako has a substantial positive influence on the whole learning environment, and strengthens our children’s sense of community. In a time where Covid-19 has had such a profound impact on students, this is such a crucial and overlooked aspect of the programme.
We’re pleased that MacNamara highlighted the fact that a majority (63 per cent) of respondents in the Talbot Mills poll we commissioned supported doubling Ka Ora, Ka Ako. New Zealanders are worried – 83 per cent of people in our survey rated affordable healthy food in their top cost of living concerns – and we don’t want our kids going hungry.
The evidence is clear and there’s broad community support for Ka Ora, Ka Ako. Rather than critique pro-equity health and education interventions on the basis of costliness, we need to be finding ways to make them work because they’re desperately needed.
In the scheme of health and education interventions, Ka Ora, Ka Ako is well worth the cost given its deep and far-reaching benefits. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting whānau hard, and with deepening inequity, the Government has a responsibility to do all it can to tackle it, especially for our kids.
Public policy making is invariably a trade-off. Sound public policy wrings the greatest public good from the lowest cost. It does not mean that the lowest cost wins the day, but it means that funding for a programme must buy more public good than could otherwise be bought with that money.
Let us start by asking what good New Zealanders are buying with the $274m a year that currently feeds 224,000 school children a free school lunch.
I accept that there are a wide range of broadly good effects that are hoped for from the lunch programme, these range from better nutrition for all children to lower costs for families. Some are borne out, largely to a mild or moderate degree, by the New Zealand data gathered.
But let us take Government ministers at their word. The main reason given to the Cabinet in 2019 when the first funding was signed off for the lunch programme was this: “the primary impact would be reduced food insecurity among children from disadvantaged households.”
It is then reasonable to ask, how can we best feed these children? As currently designed, the programme feeds lunch to one-quarter of all school children, and to every child in each of the 981 schools wherein its offered, at the neediest end of the Ministry of Education’s Equity Index.
But as the Health Coalition Aotearoa itself notes, many needy kids fall outside this scope.
The evaluations so far suggest that the best effects of free lunches are derived from feeding kids who are sometimes or often hungry at home. You can read it for yourself:
Since the considerable (Covid-era) funding for the programme runs out at the end of this calendar year, it is timely to consider whether it can be better spent. Health Coalition Aotearoa suggests doubling the number of kids covered by the lunches, and keeping the programme universally free. The cost would run north of $548m a year.
I think the data suggests another compelling option: offer the programme in hybrid form across schools, some families pay, poorer families don’t, some kids choose to bring their own lunch. (The UK operates such a model for the majority of children who eat a school lunch.)
Such a scheme would allow us to feed every hungry child at school (on data from the NZ Health Survey you could feed these kids twice over) on the current bill of $274m.
It is flat out misleading to suggest that stigma would necessarily be attached to children whose families could not pay for the lunches. Many schools currently manage to directly invoice families for ordinary course activities: outdoor education trips, school camp costs, even uniforms. These are billed discreetly, by email or sometimes families log into a central system. Sometimes the cost is quietly waived. We do not exist in an imagined world of lining up poor kids in a hallway for free stuff; it is a straw man to suggest that we do.
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