Lunch is served

Free lunches are going gangbusters in some schools, but are not so popular at others. Photo / Bay of Plenty Times

It was probably inevitable that the delivery of the government's free lunch in schools programme was going to be patchy. In many cases it is reportedly working well, with youngsters, at both primary and high school levels, enjoying what is being put in front of them.

There are also stories of masses of meals going uneaten, to the point, in some communities, where the surplus that is being given to food banks and the like is actually exceeding demand. Some teachers are reportedly taking uneaten meals home, simply to ensure they don't go to waste, and others are finding their way to families whose household budgets could do with a boost.

One Far North secondary school has told the Northland Age that the meals are not only being devoured with gusto, albeit under teacher supervision, but that the programme has reduced the amount of litter that needs picking up. A couple of primary schools are not so impressed.

Parents at several schools have complained that the food is not tempting young palates, that it is tasteless, at times grossly overcooked, and on occasion features highly sweetened ingredients that they would never have put in front of their children.

It is Kaitaia Primary School that has made the headlines, after a meal comprising a dollop of cold spaghetti and cheese arrived at about the same time as the buses to take the kids home. That might have been understandable if it had happened on Day 1, but is less easily explained weeks into the programme. And while KPS principal Brendon Morrissey, who is clearly impressed by the service so far, dismissed that catering failure as an aberration, there have been other cases of cold lunches arriving late at schools around the Far North.

Meanwhile some parents would very much prefer to feed their own children, a flash of independence that the Ministry of Education seems intent on stamping out. According to ACT, the ministry is advising teachers to "create a time (10-15 minutes) that is solely for eating the provided lunch, while food from home stays in students' bags." That doesn't impress David Seymour, who says it punishes students and parents who have taken personal responsibility for providing their own lunch. It also means some kids sit and watch others eating their lunch while they wait to tuck into theirs.

The ministry, he adds, is also telling schools to choose a time for lunch that gives staff and students the greatest opportunity to benefit, in that "healthy food tastes better if you are hungry."

It might be true that youngsters need time to develop a taste for healthy options, but there is something wrong in suggesting that they will eat this stuff if they are hungry enough. Perhaps there would be greater uptake if all meals were served as the kids queue for the buses that will take them home.

Buried in amongst all the statistics - Ka Ora, Ka Ako has been accepted by 88 schools with a collective roll of more than 15,000 in Northland alone, while according to the ministry's website, at last report more than 8 million meals had been served to 132,600 children at 542 schools nationally - all the hype, all the predictions that a free feed in the middle of the day would have massive benefits for children who were otherwise going hungry (no argument there) and that the meals would encourage some regular absentees to turn up (which by all accounts is the case in some schools), there remains a flicker of common sense out beyond the borders of the Ministry of Education.

Last week we learned that 763 schools had been offered the free lunches, all of them within the poorest 25 per cent in terms of socio-economic disadvantage, and where students face the greatest barriers that can affect access to education, wellbeing and achievement. That number is expected to rise to 963 by the end of the year. But 29 schools have said no thanks. Not because some of their kids don't need help, but because they reckon they can do it better than a government programme that, typically, applies the broadest of brushes to a problem that has been overstated.

One of those schools is in Christchurch, which has its own programme, Green Lunches, that provides food, free, to any child who needs it The principal at another school said they had turned down the offer because they felt their whānau didn't need Ka Ora, Ka Ako, while others were in greater need. And - wait for it - the school's staff knew their community intimately.

"We have food here for those who need it, and we are pretty alert if someone is having trouble," he/she said. How refreshing is that?

A number of Far North school communities have expressed the same view, arguing that food should be offered to those who need it and not to those who don't. The Northland Age understands that staff at one Far North school quietly peek into the kids' bags while they are beavering away at their morning lessons, and slip lunch into any that don't have one. The kids who need feeding are fed, there is no stigma attached to those who go to school lunchless, and the taxpayer is saved quite a lot of money.

It might not be practical to do that - and in this day and age there might be some legal issues involved in an adult delving into a child's school bag to see what is and isn't in it - but that smacks of the sort of common sense that has been surgically removed from bureaucrats and politicians. And it might not work in a big school as well as in a small one, although one imagines it would not take long to calculate, fairly accurately, how many lunches would be needed on any given day.

As is so often the case, something that is well intentioned, and necessary - the sad fact is that some parents in this country don't feed their kids, and however we might feel about that, the kids should not be punished for something that is totally beyond their control - will have unintended consequences however. What we should be striving for is a society where parents take their responsibilities to their children, and so to society as a whole, seriously. Those who wish to feed their children, with food that is good for them and that they will eat, should be allowed, indeed encouraged, to do so. Those who genuinely can't obviously need more help than Ka Ora, Ka Ako, provides them.

That, however, requires a degree of targeting that is clearly beyond this or any government. Governments in this country don't do targeting. Everyone's in or everyone's out. Nor are they much chop at addressing the roots of problems. Much easier to treat the symptom than to cure the disease.

If some kids are benefiting from these meals, as they undoubtedly are, to the point where they are attending school more regularly and are learning more than they were when they were hungry, then that is a wonderful thing. But surely it could be done better than this. And it is hard to believe that a lump of cold spaghetti sprinkled with cheese has the power to transform a young life.

If it does, then parents who can't make even that minimal effort for their children really don't deserve to be parents at all.