The Spinoff: Has David Seymour ‘saved’ school lunches – or enshittified them?

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You mightn’t think that giving kids free lunches would be “one of the most direct ways to tackle intergenerational poverty”. But that’s what Ragne Maxwell, principal of Porirua College, thinks it is. And that’s what, in her view, remains under threat, despite the National-led government’s claim to have “saved” the free school lunches programme.

The scheme, a signature Jacinda Ardern achievement, currently feeds 220,000 pupils in the poorest quarter of schools, with potentially far-reaching consequences. “Food is the first, and best, medicine,” says Maxwell’s fellow principal Jason Ataera, who runs nearby Tairangi School.

And it’s a much-needed intervention. New Zealand data shows that children who frequently go without food are, when it comes to school results, four years behind their well-fed peers.  

Fortunately, international research finds that school food programmes lift pupils’ marks. They leave children more alert and better able to learn, and physically and mentally healthier. The schemes also create “lifelong educational and health benefits”, according to the Public Health Communications Centre. “[The] improvement in diet quality and broader taste preferences, through exposure to new foods, translates to improvements in children’s mental health, dental health, and reduced risk of chronic diseases later in life.”

Most participating New Zealand schools report higher student attendance, improved behaviour, and rising achievement rates. The latest research shows that children in Ka Ora Ka Ako, as the lunches scheme is known, are “more settled and able to engage with classroom activity and learning … the programme is having a profound impact on the wellbeing of learners.”

Act leader David Seymour, though, has long opposed the scheme, and hinted at a desire to scrap it entirely. Faced with furious campaigning earlier this year, the government announced in early May that it would retain the scheme. But it would cut the cost by around one-third, removing $107m from its $323m annual budget.

Recently released tender documents reveal how this is supposed to work. Until now, schools have been funded to either cook the lunches onsite or use an external caterer of their choice. Under the new system, this arrangement will continue for children in years zero to six, the core primary cohort. But for intermediate and secondary pupils, the ministry will issue centralised contracts for caterers to deliver mass-produced “heat and eat” meals. 

This system, designed to reduce the per-meal cost from around $6 to $8 currently to just $3, could – the tender documents hint – be rolled out to all children from 2027 onwards. The documents also suggest nine “example meals”. Although one is a tuna sandwich, the others are basic but reasonably appealing hot meals: “hidden vegetable butter chicken”, “vege-loaded mac n cheese”, “Mexican rice & bean burrito”, “savoury mince with roasted seasonal veges”, “teriyaki chicken” and so on.

One big problem, though: the government doesn’t know if caterers can deliver what it wants. A March briefing paper, seen by RNZ, admitted officials had not “market-tested or otherwise analysed the proposed $3 per head price. We do not know whether sufficient supply exists to offer lunches to the specified standard at this price across the full range of schools.” Even if it does, officials have already admitted that the cheaper meals may be less nutritious than the old ones.

And while contractors will be paid to cook and deliver the meals to the school gates, Seymour has cut all funding for the actual food service: the microwaves schools will have to buy to heat the meals, the staff to oversee the process and deliver the state-mandated food safety plan, and the composting and packaging disposal afterwards. Any school that wants to keep cooking its own food will face an even larger bill, probably in the tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Not only does Seymour’s scheme subtly shift costs from central government to schools: it also risks damaging the very thing that makes the programme work. Maxwell says it has drastically cut children’s intake of things like fizzy drinks and pies, and led to fewer fights started by “hangry” kids. Porirua College has even shifted its lunchtime to 11.20am, so that pupils spend more of the day with full stomachs – and high concentration levels. Of the recent improvements in the school’s performance, she says, “the biggest single factor would be the school lunches”.

Even more importantly, lunch becomes an opportunity to talk to pupils about healthy eating choices. Reframing a conservative talking point, Maxwell says: “You are not just giving them fish, you are teaching them about fishing.” 

Couldn’t she do that with the butter chicken and burritos that the centralised providers may deliver to the school gates? Not necessarily. Quite apart from the cuts to service costs, Maxwell’s great worry is that the centralised providers simply won’t do what her school’s kitchen does: tailor meals minutely to what her children want to eat. And then the scheme’s most crucial benefits could fall apart.

Porirua College cooks its own meals in part because, Maxwell says, it constantly hears from other schools about the “poor” quality of meals from cost-cutting contractors. And it’s the local tailoring that changes the eating habits of kids who grow up seldom if ever tasting nutritious food. 

Accompanied by fruit and yoghurt, Porirua College’s meals are “attractively presented”, Maxwell says. “This is what’s luring kids into eating things they’ve never wanted to eat. You are talking about intergenerational issues … The kids are learning that healthy food can be delicious, and these are meals they could [in future] cook for their own children. It’s an absolutely magnificent intervention.” Conversely, one foil-wrapped container of butter chicken per child is not going to generate the same enthusiasm – nor the long-term behaviour change.

The careful tailoring of meals has also cut food waste to near-zero levels. On a typical day, Maxwell says, there’s nothing more than “a little scraping [of leftover food] at the bottom of the bin”. The danger is that Seymour’s great centralised “money-saving” exercise will actually generate more waste. As Ataera bluntly puts it: “If you start serving crap, you are going to create the problem you are trying to solve.” In recent years, the term “enshittification”, denoting the gradual degradation of many aspects of modern life, has taken on a certain currency; the fear is that the school lunch scheme will fall victim to the same trend.

If the government wanted efficiencies, Maxwell says, Porirua College’s experience – and the profit margins she hears external caterers enjoy – would suggest more in-house provision was the way to go. For his part, Ataera gave a speech last month warning that the new system might have been designed to work so badly that schools would give up on it: “We have been intentionally underfunded to cause schools to have to close the programmes, and [politicians] can pretend it was the schools’ decision.” Those fears notwithstanding, he’s currently trying to keep an open mind – but the outlook is not encouraging.