Government funding means free lunches for thousands of Rotorua children

Hot lunches provided to school pupils in Rotorua. Photo / File

Thousands of additional Rotorua children will soon receive government-paid lunches.

The school lunches programme is taking on 148 new schools in the Waiariki and Tairāwhiti regions after an initial trial of 30 this year.

Further schools in other regions are still to be chosen, with the government aiming to include 200,000 children in total.

It set aside $220 million in Budget 2020 for the expansion of the trial through to the end of 2021.

The government said earlier this year that scaling up the lunch programme would also create an additional 2000 jobs nationwide.

The latest 148 schools were chosen using an equity index and will serve meals from Term 4 onwards.

Rotorua Boys' High School is one of the new additions.

Principal Chris Grinter told the Rotorua Daily Post the school was "thrilled".

Rotorua Boys' High School principal Chris Grinter. Photo / File

"This will make a huge difference to our students and it has been exciting to be part of the planning and preparations for this huge undertaking."

"The school has been conscious that there have been hungry students," he said.

"We feel this will significantly address that concern and also improve learning outcomes."

All 1000 students will receive the food and the school has developed a model of a hot lunch once a week and packaged lunches on the other four days.

"The school has planned for our lunches to happen earlier in the day than the conventional school lunchtime so that the benefit of well-fed students will flow into more classes than just those in the afternoon period."

Hot lunches provided to school pupils in Rotorua. Photo / File

Reporoa College has also been added.

Principal Brendan Carroll said the school had been helping feed students with a breakfast club and KidsCan donations for at least four years.

"This will improve attendance, concentration and make sure they are having healthy meals," he said.

Unicef's latest report card out this week showed New Zealand ranked 35th in child wellbeing outcomes out of 41 countries from the European Union and OECD, based on data from 2013 to 2018.

In response, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the report "pre-dates our progress in rolling out the $5.5 billion families package, setting child poverty targets, lifting 18,400 children from poverty, and improving seven out of nine child poverty measures".