The first day of the new Healthy School Lunch Programme turned into a fiasco with oven issues and late deliveries.
Frustrated principals and delivery delays; the new school lunch programme was late for class on its first day following problems with ovens.
An email from the School Lunch Collective has referenced a “technical problem” on the first day of the new school lunch programme.
The email apologised to schools and students for the number of times this week that lunches were late for delivery.
The School Lunch Collective has since confirmed that the issue had indeed been resolved, but there would be significant delays for Auckland schools enrolled in the programme, many of which were unlikely to receive deliveries on time.
Some schools paid for food themselves so students didn’t have to go without at lunchtime. School Lunch Collective said schools in this situation would be reimbursed, and that in some cases, Compass NZ had delivered additional food items to schools.
The Collective has the task of delivering over 127,000 lunches to schools across the country every day, and said it was committed to supporting students learning through the Healthy School Lunches Programme.
Since announcing the new programme in October 2024, the Associate Minister for Education, Hon. David Seymour, said he expected the programme to continue to evolve over time, but first and foremost, he was proud to deliver the new programme to schools for the start of term one this year.
“Every student who previously received a school lunch will continue to do so. By leveraging private sector expertise from companies like Compass Group, Libelle, Gilmours, and over 17 food manufacturers and suppliers, we are setting a precedent for the government working with businesses to achieve better results,” he said.
The main reason to reform the programme in Seymour’s view was to deliver the same outcomes while costing taxpayers less. He said this was achieved by embracing commercial experience, using government buying power, and generating supply chain efficiencies to realise over NZD $130 million of annual cost savings, even more than was anticipated in Budget 2024.
“If the previous government had set up the programme with the new, more efficient, model, around $800 million of taxpayer’s funds could have been saved over the past five years with the same outcome for the students. It was impossible to justify keeping the old model when it is possible to deliver at half the cost.”
He added that the government is also providing food for up to 10,000 two-to-five year olds who attend low-equity, community-based early learning services. This will be funded by some of the cost savings found in the lunch programme. From 31 March, around 4,000 children will receive meals in early learning centres. Additional centres will join the programme every six weeks until we reach 10,000 children receiving nutritious food.
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