Feed the Kids is more important than ever and why ACTs 3 Buck Chuck isn’t a solution

ByMartyn Bradbury

NZ’s starving students: Hungry kids trailing peers by up to four years in maths, science

    • A major new analysis examining food poverty and academic achievement finds hungry students are trailing their better-off peers in key subjects like maths and science.
    • That pattern held even when the researchers adjusted for socio-economic factors – and had not expected it to be so large.
    • As the Government’s newly revamped lunches in schools programme starts, the study authors say it needs to be doubled to reach more students.

Kiwi kids going hungry at school are ending up years behind peers in key subjects, reveals a new analysis that also ranks New Zealand poorly for food poverty.

The health researchers behind the just-published analysis argue the Government needs to double the number of children served by its newly revamped lunches in schools scheme.

It’s long been known that hungry students struggle to learn: food poverty has been cited as a big barrier in New Zealand’s scoring under the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa).

But a comparison between that and two other global datasets has allowed a team of researchers to look at the link in greater depth. After analysing food insecurity levels with subject-specific scores, the team revealed a stark trend.

Any degree of food insecurity was associated with much lower academic performance – a pattern that held across all subjects, age groups, and surveys.

“And we had not expected the effect size to be so large,” said study co-author Professor Boyd Swinburn, of the University of Auckland’s School of Population Health.

In all, it equated to a learning gap equivalent to hungry students trailing two to four years behind in subjects like maths and reading by age 15 – even after adjusting for socio-economic indicators.

David Seymour’s 3 Buck Chuck is NOT the solution to hungry kids failing educationally at school…

Up to 2000 people could lose jobs over school lunch changes

Up to 2000 people could lose their jobs as a result of the government’s change to the school lunchesfunding model.

Currently up to 156 school lunch suppliers made up of businesses and local trusts feed their school communities under the Ka Ora, Ka Ako healthy lunches programme.

The Ministry of Education says 75 of those provider contracts will end on 24 December after a decision to partner with the School Lunch Collective – run by international company Compass Group.

One supplier, Trust House, will have to let go all 47 people employed to run the programme because it was blindsided by the decision and thought its contracts had been extended to 2026.

…As The Daily Blog pointed out right from the beginning, the real story here was always the corporate welfare ACT was prepared to give an enormous corporation with a terrible reputation for food quality at the cost of local suppliers…

Exactly.

The food is now processed shit from corporations with appalling track record in food service provision…

We know that the largest school lunch providers, Libelle and Compass, have lost significant numbers of schools in the past year, due to performance issues – with schools opting to go with alternative providers.

…plus we are killing off 75 local food suppliers at a time when we have rising unemployment…

‘Massive blow’: 75 suppliers lose school lunch contracts

Thousands of jobs are on the line as 75 suppliers will lose their school lunch contracts at the end of the year.A consortium led by global catering giant Compass Group won the contract to deliver free school lunches to 176,000 students under a new model.The consortium, which includes Libelle and Gilmours, will deliver lunches or ingredients to schools at $3 a pop, down from up to $8.69 under the current model.Suppliers who have missed out on the contract say the new model is a “massive blow” to their business.

…which in turn kills off the local element of the school food programme, the ability for parents to help out and become engaged, the use of local farms and food grown at school as part of the process.

You know, all the community element that makes this programme so important.

What we have had replaced is shit food from corporations with shit records at providing food.

David Seymour has managed to take a great policy and fuck it up.

The greatest audacity here?

We’ve had to cut these food programmes because this Government needed $2.9billion for Landlords tax loopholes.

We took out of the mouth of children to put into the pockets of the rich.

Our children, living in a land of milk and honey, deserve better than this!

 

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22 Comments

  1. Totally agree with Martyn’s piece–slops cook/chill meals for kids by companies that hospitals have rejected, shows exactly where this Govt. is coming from. As does all the rest of their targeted austerity such as slashing respite care for disabled carers and cutting funding for community NGOs.

    We may not be able to defeat these tory and libertarian swine just yet, but we do not have to join them!–or lapse into passive grumpiness. Get active in some form.

  3. Recent Reddit post re someones kid’s school lunches courtesy of Seymour showed the quality was far below what Seymour was eating on the day he was wetting himself with excitement at his product launch.

    1. My understanding is that the meals are starting in the new term so how did the poster have a chance to trail meals . I have been involved with catering for the last 30 years and a dollar 3 meal will hard to do especially as it includes delivery but $8 was way over the top. I think commentators should wait and see how the meals are received before passing judgement

    3. Dave would likely have had a fresh chef prepared item rather than a reheated cook/chill as kids will be faced with.

      The usual crap above on Bennie’s, just prejudice and trolling. Benefits do not pay enough for rent, food, power, let alone buy cigarettes or drink.

      Scandinavian countries do quality free school meals and they are relatively wealthy countries. Education outcomes and equality are the reasons why.

  6. I worked many years as a teacher in rural Western China.
    Every school there provides noon meals for students as a given.
    Provinces such as Gansu are among the poorest in China but school meals usually consist of two bowls, one of rice, one of vegetables, topped with bean curd, meat, fish or eggs. Often there is fruit available as well.
    These meals are free to all students, often business people, who remember their own impoverished childhoods, contribute funds. They are prepared in school kitchens, not packaged and sent to schools by private companies.
    The People’s Republic of China is, of course, a brutal dictatorship but not one that starves children from poor families.

    1. Brutal dictatorships might look quite inviting in comparison with David Seymour’s vision for New Zealand.

  9. ‘How many starved to death, can’t quite recall, please remind me Da Zhong.’
    Usual right wing disregard for facts.
    People starved to death in the Great Leap Forward 1950s to 1961.
    People were persecuted, but not starved in the Cultural Revolution 1960s to 1976.
    I did actually say it is a brutal dictatorship but since the 1980s
    It has raised the living standard of almost all its people.
    It has invested a lot in clean technology( I freely admit there is much to be done in a still badly polluted country).
    In Western China it has successfully halted much of the desertification, erosion and huge sandstorms that were a major problem. It has reforested huge areas.
    Since the famine years its farmers successfully feed the whole country and produce export foodstuffs.
    After major earthquakes, the damage is repaired within about five years(Unlike Christchurch).
    I could go on about advances since the Cultural Revolution Days. but I will not.
    It is not a democracy – I would love someone to tell me how China could successfully move from a one party state to a Western style democracy. I think practically all the Chinese I speak to do not believe a western style democracy can run a country as huge and diverse as China. They have an example in the anarchism of the warlord era.
    Given a choice between an efficient dictatorship and a chaotic rule by bandit and warlord factions they choose the dictatorship that lets most people lead their lives in peace and plenty.
    FINALLY
    Continually harking back to the Cultural Revolution is rather as though Chinese continually reminded Europeans of Nazism, Facism, colonialism, witch hunts, religious persecution, The Great Irish Famine, the genocide of aboriginal people around the world.
    In the meantime the Chinese dictatorship feeds children now while Im right lives in the past.
    (When full Trump arrives I expect you to see a chaotic US dictatorship competing with a tyranny that knows what it is doing).

  10. So are you wearing made in China clothes im right if so, I suggest you strip them of you hypocrite.

  11. ‘The Chinese have given the world so much, I agree, like …COVID, sweat shops, organ harvesting of prisoners…the list could go on!’
    You keep missing the point. Even evil communists can provide school lunches, so could the Nazis.
    Sweatshops? Yes, indeed terrible factory conditions.
    And all over rural China young people migrate from poverty in their villages to work on assembly lines that might not pay much by our standards but lift them out of poverty.
    How many of the terrible employers are western firms getting their products made cheaply in China?
    Bit like the European peasants of the eighteenth century in the industrial revolution who flocked from rural to urban workforces and inspired marxism. There were sweatshops in many places including New Zealand.
    Organ harvesting – yes it happens. Who can afford to buy the organs? Oh!maybe you don’t know most kidneys, livers, eyes go to Western buyers who can afford them.
    But I apologise – I forgot evil deeds are only performed by communists – anything capitalists do is acceptable.

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