Principals' Federation says 'time has now come' to revert to previous school lunches arrangement

Thursday, 27 February 2025

The Principals’ Federation has written a letter to David Seymour saying the time has come to revert to the previous school lunch arrangement.

It said the new system was not improving with time, with a particular concern being a ‘huge increase in wastage’.

But Seymour says many children are writing in saying the new meals are better than the meals they had in 2024.

ACT leader David Seymour has responded to criticisms of the school lunches programme by asking, “how would you like 11 free butter chickens?”

The comment came as the Principals’ Federation (NZPF) called for a return to the previous school lunches system with local funding, saying the new cost-saving system pushed by Seymour had resulted in a “huge increase in wastage”.

In a letter to Seymour, who is associate education minister, NZPF president Leanne Otene said the “global company” brought in to provide the lunches “has not delivered on your expectations, nor on ours”.

It was nearly halfway through the first term, and the school lunch system was not improving with time, Otene said.

Talking to reporters in Invercargill on Thursday, Seymour said some principals were behaving in a way that was basically teaching people to be ungrateful.

“I had one principal complaining that they got 11 meals of free butter chicken. Well, there’s a lot of people in the world that if you said, ‘how would you like 11 free butter chickens’, their response wouldn’t be a complaint,” Seymour said.

He also defended the quality of the meals which has been part of the ongoing criticism.

“Many children are writing in and saying ‘we think these meals are better than we had last year’,” Seymour said.

The programme cost had been reduced from $340 million a year, for which the previous government had left no money in the budget, to one costing $170m, Seymour said on Thursday.

If the principals wanted to make an argument that the programme should be changed back to the previous system, then they needed to explain what would be so different that it was worth spending the extra $170m, Seymour said.

He agreed people had been right when they complained earlier in 2025 that the meals were arriving late. “There was one day in one city we only got 11% delivered in full on time,” Seymour said.

But on Wednesday, 100% of meals had been delivered in full on time.

What principals said in letter to Seymour

In the letter, Otene said that increasingly teachers and support staff were being distracted from classroom teaching time to find alternative lunches for large numbers of students.

The federation had previously said it would call on Seymour to reverse the decision that had brought in the new supplier, and revert to the local delivery option that had been used before.

“That time has now come,” Otene said.

“NZPF now asks you to cancel the current contract and fund schools to deliver school lunches locally.”

What the scheme is

Seymour has attempted to slash the cost of lunches to $3 where possible (some internal models receive an extra $1), saying it would still be a “like for like” experience for students. Previously meals had cost between $5.97 and $8.90 to supply.

Currently, 69 suppliers provide school lunches in addition to schools where lunches are made on site. Of those, the biggest are Compass Group NZ and Libelle Group, who form part of The School Lunch Collective.

The collective’s bulk meals are prepared and cooked in Hamilton and distributed frozen to 22 kitchens around New Zealand to be thawed, heated and delivered.

Compass has been approached for comment by Stuff.

Talking to RNZ on Wednesday, Compass managing director Paul Harvey said he acknowledged and apologised for “some issues that we certainly had in those first few weeks”.

Under its contract, the collective was supposed to have provided a smooth and seamless roll out of the new lunch services.

“Everyday we’re making progress and improvement,” Harvey said.

The collective was now starting to track the number of uneaten, wasted meals each day at each school, and that information was being provided to the Ministry of Education.

He wouldn’t say how many wasted meals there were.

He was asked about an email from a senior nutritionist with the programme for the ministry that reported daily “surpluses” at west Auckland schools of about 50%.

Harvey said those weren’t the figures he saw, but added: “I’m not here to refute the numbers from a particular school”.