Associate Minister of Education David Seymour said it was clear the programme was "doing a great job". Photo / Mark Mitchell
Associate Minister of Education David Seymour said it was clear the programme was "doing a great job". Photo / Mark Mitchell
The School Lunch Collective is aiming to improve the delivery of its under-fire cut-price lunches scheme, after 171 formal complaints from schools in its first month.
Data obtained by Newstalk ZB under the Official Information Act shows there were 171 formal complaints from 93 schools to the Education Ministry, from the start of term one to February 27.
Complaints included logistical issues, quantity of meals, late deliveries, missed deliveries and problems with the menu.
Labour says it’s a “hugely important issue”, with fears it is having an impact on schooling.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is standing by the lunches, saying providers are doing a “great job” and are quick to respond to complaints.
At the time, Seymour said they had embraced commercial expertise, used the Government’s buying power and found supply-chain efficiencies to get “over $130m of annual cost savings”, even more than anticipated in last year’s Budget.
However, there have been multiple high-profile issues.
Multiple complaints were about meals not complying with specialised dietary requirements, accounting for 38 of the complaints from 30 schools.
In mid-February, a lunch provider admitted halal meals were “halal friendly” and not halal-certified.
The next most common complaint was meal quality, with 28 complaints from 25 schools. Food safety and suitability made up 21 total complaints to the Education Ministry, from 20 schools.
In a response to Newstalk ZB‘s request for official information, the Ministry of Education said as a whole, the programme was working well.
It acknowledged “some challenges” but recent delivery has been more than 99% on-time to schools.
The Ministry of Education was also confident the term one delivery challenges had been “mostly resolved”.
Hester Goodwin, acting head of operations and integration at the Ministry of Education, was confident the School Lunch Collective worked hard to make sure last term’s “shortfall in production” would not be repeated.
Resourcing changes and equipment at Compass Central Manufacturing Unit, contracted to make lunches, meant more meals could be processed and quality control was consistently measured.
The School Lunch Collective has delivered more than 6 million lunches since the start of term one.
Seymour said in a month, the collective delivered about 2.5 million meals.
“In the first month of the new programme there were only 171 complaints, and when they are made, the collective are quick to address them,” he said.
“It is clear that the new programme is doing a great job while costing the taxpayer half as much.”
Act leader and Associate Education Minister David Seymour previously said there had been a series of challenges with the school lunches programme. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Labour’s spokesperson for education, Willow-Jean Prime, believed it was “hugely concerning” to see that many complaints in such a short amount of time.
The Labour MP was “glad” the Auditor-General was putting the programme under the microscope.
Prime hoped issues with the programme would be fixed “for the sake of our children”.
Four schools which participated in the previous lunches programme decided to opt-out of the new scheme.
Crunching the numbers
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament’s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.
