Painful teething problems with new school lunches

Thursday, 30 January 2025

The new school lunch programme, touted by the Government as nutritious, filling and cheap, has been labelled a tardy “fiasco” by principals on debut this week.

Waverley Primary School’s food arrived too late for lunch on Wednesday, principal of the Taranaki school Tim Marriott said. Thursday was better.

In South Auckland, Healthy School Lunches Programme (Ka Ora, Ka Ako) deliveries to McAuley High School in Ōtāhuhu went awry.

“We are grateful for the food but the logistics we saw yesterday was a fiasco,' McAuley High School principal Jan Waelen told The Post.

Paul Harvey of The School Lunch Collective apologised.

'We acknowledge there have been teething problems in the first days of the Healthy School Lunches Programme,“ he said in a written statement.

“We apologise to the schools and students affected by this and are in contact with them to address these early challenges.

“We appreciate the patience and support they have given so far. With over 127,000 meals being sent around the country every school day, we are learning each day.“

The initial signs on Wednesday were not good, and so it proved, Marriott told The Post.

“When I arrived at school in the morning, I got a phone call saying, ‘hey, look, we've had an issue with our delivery, we just need some information about your specials’,” so he explained gluten free and halal options were needed.

Then there was another call.

“Our lunch was scheduled to be delivered at about 11.30, we have lunch at 12.50 … we got a phone call to say that she was stuck in road works … about 40 minutes later she actually arrived.”

Lunches were packaged in four boxes for seven classrooms, and the driver told him she was meant to leave at 8am, but didn't have any delivery information at that time.

“All the information that had been going out to schools was that they'd been doing dry runs, and they knew exactly what time they should be leaving and how long it's going to take.

“Yesterday, I threw out 80 meals. So it's just a giant waste of money.”

“[Thursday's] lunch is so much better than yesterday's … pasta and mince with carrots, and actually, it's quite edible. I'm eating one myself just to see what it's like. It's a bit bland, but it's better than what they tried to serve our kids yesterday,” he said.

“In my opinion, this is exactly what David Seymour wants. It's almost like he's setting it up for failure so that he can turn around and go, ‘well, we tried and it didn't work so let's cut it’.”

Previously the school had issues with suppliers Compass Group. Efforts to contact them this time were unsuccessful, he said.

“We don't get the fruit or the yoghurt or the cheese that we used to get. It's just pasta or it's just a meal. I do have to say they are hot, which is nice.

“I'd like to see David Seymour eat one of these to see what he thought about the gluten-free special option for our kids.”

– additional reporting by Harriette Boucher

*This article originally referred to some food being mouldy. This was added in error and has been corrected. Friday January 30 6.58 am.