It comes after The Post reported a pre-Budget Treasury report was highly critical of the programme after finding as many as 10,000 lunches a day are left over, and recommended against the programme being permanently funded until improvements could be seen.

The programme, which launched as a pilot programme in 2019, provides more than 220,000 lunches to 995 schools each day and was given an extra $323 million in this year's Budget to keep it running until next year.

KidsCan chief executive and founder Julie Chapman says food insecurity is a growing issue across many of the school it works with. Continue reading

It wasn't until several months and dozens of ham, egg and mayo sandwiches later, I found out - by chance - that he had been feeding a schoolmate, too.

My initial reaction was annoyance. But after talking with my son, who was perplexed by my reaction, I soon humbled myself.

"We have extra bread, and you didn't mind making the sandwiches when you thought they were for me, so what's the problem?", was my 11-year-old's answer to, "Why didn't you tell me the sandwiches were for your friend?".

I felt sheepish at the way I had acted. My son saw that his friend was hungry, so found a solution. Fixed.

But if only it were that easy to fix poverty.

A Salvation Army Report released earlier this year laid the numbers bare: Pasifika and Maori children still experience poverty rates two to three times higher than Asian and European children. And one in five children in decile one areas left school without NCEA Level 1.

The number of households relying on welfare benefits has increased, and children in these families are the most likely to live in poverty.

Although government financial assistance has increased, the continued pandemic and rising living costs contribute to increasing uncertainty around lifting the most vulnerable children out of poverty.

Also worryingly, the number of children identified as victims of abuse, including sexual abuse, has increased. Covid-19 has contributed to disruptions in children's education, while disparities in educational outcomes have worsened between Maori and non-Maori.

Why are we not more outraged as a country? Maybe we are, or maybe it's fatigue?

The Government's free lunches pilot in lower decile schools has solved the dilemma of many children going to school and being hungry, but what about dinner time, and weekends? And what about all the other disadvantages of growing up in poverty, like not being able to play sports, or afford shoes, or attend school?

Budget 2022 will give a $350 cost of living payment to those earning less than $70,001, but people who receive the winter energy payment, such as those on sole parent support, the jobseeker benefit, veterans and people getting NZ Superannuation, are not entitled to the cost of living payment.

Finance Minister Grant Robertson​ said the Government had already provided increases for those on income support.

"Since coming into Government, the changes mean that 364,000 people who receive income support are better off by an average of $109 per week. For those with children, they are better off by an average of $175 per week," Robertson​ said.

I grew up in a small forestry town. We were poor, but I didn't know I was poor. How can that be, you ask?

Well, simply put, everyone around me was poor. We had everything we needed: kai, a warm home, but there was no money for extras like shoes and new clothes. We didn't have a car, so I walked everywhere or borrowed a horse from the back paddock to get to school.

I was raised in an era where cellphones were only used for texting, calling, and playing Snake. Social media was still a relatively new thing, and I spent weekends and after school swimming in the river and building huts in trees. We fished for our dinners and traded wild boar for milk and butter.

It's a different time nowadays. Continue reading

• Donna-Lee Biddle is a is an investigator with the Criminal Cases Review Commission. A former journalist at the Waikato Times, she has a Bachelor of Media Arts (Communication), Journalism pathway & National Diploma in Journalism (Multi-Media), and has been awarded the ​Wintec Adult Learner Award 2014 and the Bruce Jesson Merit Award 2014 (investigative journalism).

About 640 schools have been invited to join the scheme next year.

At present 221 schools are benefiting from the scheme. Sixty are in the pilot regions of the Bay of Plenty, East Coast, Hawke's Bay and Otago/Southland, while an additional 161 schools started getting the free lunches this week.

Next year's expanded rollout of the scheme aims to reach the 25 per cent of students - about 200,000 children. A new "equity index" determines which schools qualify for the free school lunches.

The index is based on 26 facts about every child. These include their parents' incomes, education levels, benefit histories, criminal records and how old they were when the child was born, plus how often the child has changed homes and schools and been reported to Oranga Tamariki.

This is quite a change from the school decile system which only considered five factors averaged across each neighbourhood and is currently being phased out.

Even with the more detailed criteria, the schools being offered free lunches include 94 per cent of decile-1 state and integrated schools, 89 per cent of decile-2 schools, 74 per cent of decile-3 schools, 47 per cent of decile-4 schools and 16 per cent of decile-5 schools.

However, the new criteria mean sometimes low decile schools miss out, while neighbouring schools benefit.

In Manurewa for example, where all except two schools are below decile 5, 20 schools are listed as getting free lunches. However, five other low-decile schools are not, including St Anne's Catholic School Manurewa (decile 2).

St Anne's principal Glen Ryan says his school wasn't invited to be a part of the scheme.

"We would love to be involved as our children come from the same streets as the pupils in schools who will have access," he says.

In Mangere-Otahuhu, where all schools are decile 5 or below, 27 schools are listed but six are not. These include Al-Madinah School (2), Mangere Bridge School (3), Mt Richmond Specialist School (2), St Joseph's School Otahuhu (1), Waterlea Public School (5), Zayed College for Girls (3).

Asin Ali, principal of Muslim boys' school Al-Madinah, says his school was not invited to join the scheme.

"We are a decile-2 school and a number of parents are struggling, so I think we should be considered in line with other schools in the area," he said.

Nationally, Catholic and other integrated schools appear better off on the equity index than under the decile system.

In deciles 1 to 5, 38 per cent of Catholic schools and 36 percent of other integrated schools are on the list for free lunches, compared to 69 per cent of decile 1-5 state schools.

Seventy of the 72 decile 1-5 kura kaupapa Maori have been offered free lunches.

Eleven of the 861 schools qualifying for the lunches decided not to accept them.

Of those schools, one principal says she "opted out", while another says despite qualifying for $400,000 of lunches there was no capital funding to upgrade the school's 12 kitchens to the required commercial kitchen standard.

"It was basically bureaucracy gone mad," he said.

Source

• NZ Herald
• Image: TVNZ