A major review of the Government’s Healthy School Lunches Programme has sparked renewed calls for a return to better-funded school meals, with health experts arguing the drive to cut costs has come at the expense of tamariki.
The concerns follow a damning report from the Office of the Auditor-General, tabled in Parliament on 30 June, which found the revised school lunch programme introduced in 2024 achieved financial savings but experienced significant problems with procurement, food quality, contract management, waste and monitoring.
Researchers from Health Coalition Aotearoa say the Auditor-General’s findings mirror concerns they have been raising for months about the effectiveness of the current programme.
The Ministry of Education’s own monitoring found that, during 2025, only 50.5 percent of school lunches supplied through the School Lunch Collective met the required nutrition standards.
Health Coalition Aotearoa Co-chair Professor Boyd Swinburn said the Government had focused heavily on reducing costs but failed to properly assess whether the programme continued to deliver the educational and health benefits achieved under the previous Ka Ora, Ka Ako model.
Independent evaluations of the original programme found it helped reduce hunger, improved nutrition, increased school attendance, supported mental wellbeing, eased financial pressure on whānau and strengthened local economies by using community-based providers.
Researchers say those outcomes have been put at risk under the current model.
Health Coalition Aotearoa’s own analysis of meals delivered during 2025 found lunches contained only around half of the energy expected for a school meal and between 30 and 40 percent less energy than meals provided under the original Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme.
Of the meals researchers were able to assess against the Ministry’s nutrition standards, none met every standard across all age groups.
The organisation says this represents a failure to meet contractual nutrition requirements for the programme.
The criticism comes as child poverty and food insecurity remain significant issues across Aotearoa. A report released this week by the New Zealand Council of Christian Social Services found one in six households are living in income poverty after housing costs, more than one in ten regularly go without essential items, and one in three households experienced food insecurity during the past year.
Separate research has also found students who experience hunger because of financial hardship, even once a week, can be between two and four years behind their peers in educational achievement.
Health Coalition Aotearoa food policy spokesperson Dr Kelly Garton said the Auditor-General also identified shortcomings in the way the programme was procured and monitored, including supplier risks that were not adequately managed, one supplier entering liquidation, increasing levels of surplus meals and greater food waste than school-based and iwi-led delivery models.
The coalition says schools have continued to report that many lunches are being left uneaten because of poor quality and lack of appeal to students.
Researchers are now calling on whichever government is elected this year to permanently fund Ka Ora, Ka Ako through Vote Education at a level that allows providers to supply nutritious meals meeting at least 25 percent of children’s daily energy needs while giving schools greater flexibility over how meals are delivered.
They argue the programme should move beyond the debate over cost alone and instead focus on delivering value by ensuring tamariki arrive in classrooms well-fed, healthy and ready to learn.
For Māori communities, where food insecurity and child poverty remain disproportionately high, advocates say a strong, properly funded school lunch programme is an investment not only in education but also in hauora, equity and the future wellbeing of whānau.
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