Fallout has arisen over the Healthy School Lunch Programme, with the release of the Auditor General's latest report.
After redesigning the Healthy School Lunch Programme, Ka Ora, Ka Ako, a scathing report by the Auditor General has found that there are flaws within the programme’s procurement process, and claimed that cost has been prioritised over the quality of food served to students.
The initial changes were introduced by the Associate Minister for Education, David Seymour, early on in the political term. His ambition was to explore options to reduce the cost of school lunches, reduce surplus, or enable families to opt out of receiving school lunches should they choose to.
A two-year contract was awarded to suppliers, which was allocated over NZD 162 million across 2025 to 2026.
The Auditor General launched an investigation into the handling of the programme due to its importance within the school system, as well as how the Ministry reached its decision to allocate funding for the early childhood education food programme.
In April 2024, Cabinet agreed to the Alternative Provision Model, which comprised shelf-stable “pack and go” food that the Ministry estimated would cost about NZD 3 a meal. This cost was caveated and did not include delivery or distribution. The Ministry then appointed an External Advisory Group to further refine the Alternative Provision Model. The Group’s final recommendation, in July 2024, proposed a model where hot lunches would be provided daily. This was different to the shelf-stable model that Cabinet had approved, but it retained the NZD 3 per meal cost despite feedback from suppliers and schools that this might not be achievable.
The Ministry said that it was aware of the issues surrounding the programme’s past performance with two suppliers. The Auditor General’s report said that good contingency planning was essential to addressing these concerns.
However, the Ministry implemented the Alternative Provision Model without finalising its approach to contingency planning because there was limited time between the signing of the contract and the proposed start date. Financial stability, production capacity, and quality risks materialised early in the 2025 school year.
“We consider that the Ministry’s contingency planning was inadequate for a programme of this size, scale, and risk, particularly given the previous performance of key suppliers,” the Auditor General outlined in the report.
Education and health experts have responded to the report, with some confused about how Audit New Zealand could sit through the procurement process and not raise any of these issues at the time. The procurement process has also been labelled “appalling” and “badly deficient”, and some suppliers had been told that contracts for years 1 to 6 lunches would continue, and therefore did not tender for them.
Many have also argued that while the focus has been on cost savings, not enough attention has been paid to the cost-effectiveness of the programme.
The current programme has provided only 13 to 17 percent of a child’s energy needs for the day, which experts have argued should be about 25 percent. In contrast, the previous version of the programme provided 20 to 25 percent.
Despite the politics of the programme, schools and health experts have called for a serious review of the programme, outlining that it has a valid place in the national school system, but it needs to be managed efficiently.
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