Live: Free school lunches facing 30-50% cuts, Seymour says
Spending on the lunch programme has to be less than the $350 million a year spent now, ACT leader David Seymour says.
A 30% to 50% saving “would be in the ballpark”, he told RNZ on Monday.
His job is to put a proposal to Cabinet that “makes sure that we continue to deliver food to those where we believe it can make a difference, but not to have a wholesale wastage, untargeted expenditure of taxpayer money”, Seymour said.
There was agreement across the coalition partners that “some form of programme” would be kept, but it had to be better targeted.
There were three things that could change – the number of schools, the number of children within a school getting the lunches, and the ways the programme was delivered. “All of those are in open discussion.”
On Tuesday, Seymour told Breakfast the Ministry of Education did not have any hard evidence that the programme was making a difference for children across the board.
The ministry had done five studies on the programme. None of them asked the basic question: “If we compare the students that got the school lunches, with the students that didn’t, have we seen an improvement in kids getting to school, and kids achieving?”
“It’s certainly true that kids being well looked after, well nourished, are going to do better overall. But, of course, kids that are missing meals potentially have other problems in the home,” Seymour said.
He was looking at what benefits were being provided by the programme. “My job is to come up with a way of getting as much benefit as we can for the kids who truly need it, while also saving money so that we can balance the books.”
His question to those in the education sector was whether they was confident the $350m a year being spent on school lunches was being used well, considering NCEA results and student attendance were getting worse.
David Seymour is pretending to look at the evidence when the truth is that he doesn’t believe the State should be feeding children who parents should be responsible for.
He wants to ignore the vast amount of academic research that shows feeding hungry children at school benefits them and the anecdotal evidence from the coal face…
Niki Penny: Socioeconomic factors are a proven cause of absenteeism
Another government, another hot take on how to tackle school absenteeism. Since being given the responsibility for school attendance as associate education minister, David Seymour is championing the use of fines and prosecution as the most effective way.
Christopher Luxon believes telling parents to “wake up and talk to your kids and get them to school” is what has been missing.
Both methods exemplify a trend towards not only misunderstanding the complex factors behind school absenteeism, but to applying punitive measures that make things worse.
Of course, it’s easier – and politically convenient – to lay blame at the door of irresponsible parenting.
This one-dimensional view doesn’t require any understanding of the social and economic factors which affect a child’s access (or lack of access) to education.
In reality, the factors are almost always human. They’re almost always economic. They can almost always be fixed by addressing a glaring lack of resources.
When I started at Te Kōmanawa Rowley School, the attendance rate was 40 per cent and the school was at risk of closing.
‘Meet the Teacher’ nights had turnouts of three whānau. It now has an 83 percent attendance rate and ‘Meet the Teacher’ nights have been replaced by community hangiattended by 400 people.
How was this turned around? Not by blaming anyone, but by identifying the barriers getting kids to school.
Te Kōmanwa Rowley School is a low-decile school in southwest Christchurch surrounded by higher decile schools. As the city gets redeveloped, communities get displaced and transport options change and become more limited.
Each day a school van collects 20-30 children who have limited transport options. Teachers will collect children on their commute if whānau ask them to.
Adequate transport of course requires funding, and it’s no secret that schools are desperately underfunded.
Lack of uniform was another significant barrier. Some families couldn’t afford uniforms. For many children and whānau, a lack of uniform feels like a lack of dignity.
Now, thanks to uniform sponsorship at the school, all students are given a new uniform upon starting. Pride was a barrier to attending school, and that has been restored.
Thirdly, access to the Healthy School Lunches programme was crucial in helping kids stay in school – especially in hard economic times. We often send leftovers home to whānau.
At the time of writing this, kids have breakfast, fruit and lunch at Te Kōmanawa Rowley. This also incentivises kids to eat healthy options which was previously unaffordable to some. There is a proven correlation between food security and learning.
The problem with fines is that they will push many families further into poverty. This could actually increase school absenteeism and exacerbate gaps between families and schools that sorely need closing.
Te Kōmanawa Rowley and the local community took a partnership approach to closing the gap between families and schools, having an open dialogue so we could understand the barriers to attending.
In turn, this created a connection between school and whānau which had previously been lacking. The ‘it takes a village…’ approach to children’s educational wellbeing, school, whānau and communities meant we achieved what we all wanted; to get children into school.
School staff worked with the community and whānau to rebuild trust, and this partnership initiative has broken boundaries.
As an educator, it affirms to me that success comes from working alongside, not against, our whānau.
Fines and prosecutions may appear to be concrete and decisive political responses, but they are not evidence of a policy that values children.
The policy devalues the connection between home and school. Widening the gap between school and family will create a mistrust of government agencies, including schools.
Tackling absenteeism needs a meaningful and sustainable approach at two levels.
First, at a local level. Attendance at Te Kōmanawa Rowley turned around because schools, family, and communities worked together to get kids to where they need to be; the classroom.
Initiatives need to share the community’s language and culture, show respect to whānau, and empower schools, family and communities to work together to find localised solutions their schools need.
Second, at government level. Socioeconomic factors are a proven cause of absenteeism, and inflicting fiscal punishment makes no sense when many of these same whānau are already struggling.
Whānau can have the best intentions in the world for their children’s education, but that’s not enough in the face of economic barriers.
Long-term approaches need empathy, problem-solving, and, most importantly, a commitment from the Government to remove economic hardships facing families and fund schools properly to tackle the real drivers of truancy.
…we need to be expanding food in schools, not slashing it.
We should have free Breakfast and Lunches in all schools.
Yes there has been wastage from schools that have 3rd party agents making food off site and then dropping them off rather than making the kia on school grounds with parents helping serving plus school gardens.
Those 3rd parties are not partnering up with schools, they are doing a pity run to turn coin.
Universal provision of good healthy food made on schools grounds akin to what they do in almost every other developed country we compare ourselves to is the solution.
David wants to fine the parents of truant kids when free school breakfasts and lunches can be the solution to that.
All David wants to do is use the stick instead of any carrot.
Kids can’t eat sticks David!
We should all be ashamed of our country that we are taking money out of hungry kids mouths to fund a tax cut for wealthy landlords!
You wouldn’t let someone who despise dogs run a puppy store and you wouldn’t let a guy who hates feeding hungry children decide free school lunches.
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Before we start making David’s choice on which schoolkids we allow to go hungry, perhaps his committee should concentrate on removing most, if not all, entitlements and subsidies for our members of parliament, especially those who have left. They were probably needed when MPs and Teachers were on similar pay scales but not nowadays.
Atlas Dave just wants to enforce his twisted neo liberal doctrine on people that won’t find it easy to fight back. State provided services (ie taxpayer funded) that benefit working class people are a no no for his kind. As Martyn’s links show feeding the kids is a good thing. Free lunches and in some cases breakfasts are the only quality, or even only food, that some kids receive that day.
If he really wanted to save money he could claw back national super gold card payments from the hundreds of thousands of those that do not need it, e.g. the Deputy PM!
If school meals are cut, then direct action is needed whenever Atlas Dave or Baldrick and their crowd are spotted stuffing their faces in public.
it’s really hard to ‘digest’ how utterly mean and grasping this government is. I struggle to believe how someone like Seymour has any support whatsoever. The people who voted for the likes of him should count themselves among the most astonishingly, deplorably mean, un-kiwi people.
The school lunch programme, I don’t care how wasteful it is, doesn’t make a scratch on what Seymour, Luxon and Winston would find acceptable to spend on themselves and their supporters.
As you say TM, the moment one of those greedy men opens their mouths, someone should be there with a sign reminding them they have cut school lunches. I read Luxury Luxon and wife were being treated to a Gala Reception and Dinner last night in Australia. I hope it choked them.
I hope every mouthful at Bellamy’s tastes as bitter as they are.
For Luxon to allow this excuse for a man to have so much say about what happens in this country is the height of incompetence and poor management.
Please National Party, do something about both of them. You will be voted out never to return if you don’t pull these two shockers into line.
Nothing Jacinda or Labour did to you deserves this kind of nasty punishment.
If you don’t call them to heel, your downfall will be sooner than you think, I’d say.
Very embarrassing for you all, to have to admit you got everything so horribly wrong.
Very well said Joy.
92% didnot voter the arsehole yet he can starve kids to death that 8% are the rich pricks that dont give a rats arse about kids as they send their own off to boarding scholl as soon as they can walk .
He’s a maggot thriving off dead meat. Luxon is that carcass.
Joy. Well said. I do not believe that either Luxon or Seymour think that this issue is as simple as they pretend to. They are ruthless bastards, and the former, in particular, is not particularly intelligent.
They’re getting worse day by day and have to be deluded to think the public will swallow their obfuscations. God knows what National’s agenda was putting an idiot like Luxon in as leader and one can’t count on them to call them to heel. Today’s online picture of Louise Whatshername, the Social Welfare (? ) Minister looks like a raving lunatic, which I daresay she may well be.
We need to look at intergenerational inequities, our elderly are being looked after (gold card) but is anyone else to the same degree. And is it fair that some get more help than others and some get money when they don’t need it like our PM and some elderly pensioners as they see it as their entitlement.
He’s ignoring the fact that many campus buildings are stuck in the 19th century, and thus don’t even have cafeterias in which to serve anything — let alone basic amenities like corridors and air conditioning!
We shouldn’t forget that neo-liberals of all stripes (including the Third Way liberals) consider the Gilded Age to be the height of economic progress — that is, rapacious robber baron monopolists running everything, and huge swaths of the country “enjoying” mass unemployment and no modern infrastructure.
We and by we i mean New Zealand fucked up the corona response by keeping kids out of schools far to long and making them go to work to support there families crushed under costs of living. You have to give them a chance.
He wants the money to feed his rich prick kids at new schools like the one being built at Mangawhai where it will cost 15k a year
We’re being governed by cockwombles.
And their supporters.
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