David Seymour’s pushback against the efficiency and value of the school lunch scheme has aroused the ire of tech entrepreneur and self - confessed Labour sympathiser Sir Ian Taylor.
Seymour, after originally wanting to dispense with them completely, now wants school lunches to be cheaper and have less waste from their distribution. As a senior minister in a government facing severe economic headwinds, his desire to save money is understandable.
But Sir Ian is having none of it.
Seymour, after originally wanting to dispense with them completely, now wants school lunches to be cheaper and have less waste from their distribution. As a senior minister in a government facing severe economic headwinds, his desire to save money is understandable.
But Sir Ian is having none of it.
He started by having a crack at Seymour’s description of sushi and hummus in school lunches as “woke.” To be honest, describing those foods in that manner was not politically clever.
Seymour would have been better advised to describe them, in the context of school lunches, as “unnecessary.” Because they are.
We all know what should be in a school lunch. Generations have survived on a few sandwiches, a couple of biscuits, and some fruit. Why can’t that be the bulk standard in 2024, whether it’s made at home or provided.
But Taylor reports his own grandchildren, whose father is a doctor, as sometimes enjoying rice, salmon and avocado in their sushi school lunches. Well, good for them.
Sir Ian then quotes the famed Dunedin Study. It found “the importance of a healthy diet optimal for cognitive and educational outcomes” and “improving children’s nutrition has a positive impact on their learning and development, leading to better academic performance and long-term health benefits.”
Frankly, you don’t need a long term academic study to know that. Any parent and any teacher has known the value of well-fed children forever.
Then comes the rebuttal to the most important question in all of this discussion.
Seymour asks “is it really the role of education to feed kids?”
Taylor’s answer to this is Finland. Despite sharing a long border with Russia and being bloody cold in the winter, Finland – or rather her population – are the happiest people in the world, according to some survey.
That’s nice.
They have a highly regarded education system and a growing economy but they also have a net average tax rate per worker of 31.6 percent, a full six percent higher than the OECD average.
(New Zealand’s equivalent number is 21.1 percent.)
The Finnish government’s 88 billion euro annual budget provides school lunches to every student every day. That’s the sort of activity a highly taxed economy can afford. It’s the way Finland has looked after its school children for over 80 years.
Therefore what Finland does is irrelevant. We pay less tax here, and New Zealand children have traditionally taken their own lunch to school.
The answer to Seymour’s question about whether it’s the role of the Education Ministry to pay for a child’s lunch is a resounding no.
The Ministry has been a spectacular failure delivering learning outcomes so it’s hardly surprising it couldn’t provide an efficient school lunch service either.
What we have, and have had for two or possibly three generations, is an increasing number of hopeless parents.
Anybody who has done it for any length of time knows that making kids school lunches doesn’t take much time and doesn’t cost much.
A quick check of New World prices this week reveals Pam’s White or Wholemeal bread is $1.19, 500 grams of butter is $5.69, a pottle of honey $6.59, Vegemite is $4.59, a kilogram of cheese is $10.19, chocolate chip biscuits are $4.39 and a bag of apples $5.99.
Therefore the ingredients for the kind of lunches that kids have eaten for years cost $38.63. There’s enough in that list, with the addition of another packet or two of bread, to feed one child for at least two weeks.
What those prices prove is that a child’s school lunch can be made at home for about $4.
You have to be a rather pathetic parent if you can’t afford that. All it takes is a bit of planning and about 10 minutes of your time of a morning or the night before.
Seymour is right to ask the question about whether education should pay for school lunches. He’s lost the argument for now and there will be $478 million of taxpayers money set aside to pay for the job that parents should be doing.
The funding is locked in till 2026 – election year – and school lunches will no doubt be an issue when we go to the polls that year.
Labour supporters like Sir Ian believe it is the role of the government to feed children at school.
But if you can’t feed your child, you have no right to be a parent.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
Seymour would have been better advised to describe them, in the context of school lunches, as “unnecessary.” Because they are.
We all know what should be in a school lunch. Generations have survived on a few sandwiches, a couple of biscuits, and some fruit. Why can’t that be the bulk standard in 2024, whether it’s made at home or provided.
But Taylor reports his own grandchildren, whose father is a doctor, as sometimes enjoying rice, salmon and avocado in their sushi school lunches. Well, good for them.
Sir Ian then quotes the famed Dunedin Study. It found “the importance of a healthy diet optimal for cognitive and educational outcomes” and “improving children’s nutrition has a positive impact on their learning and development, leading to better academic performance and long-term health benefits.”
Frankly, you don’t need a long term academic study to know that. Any parent and any teacher has known the value of well-fed children forever.
Then comes the rebuttal to the most important question in all of this discussion.
Seymour asks “is it really the role of education to feed kids?”
Taylor’s answer to this is Finland. Despite sharing a long border with Russia and being bloody cold in the winter, Finland – or rather her population – are the happiest people in the world, according to some survey.
That’s nice.
They have a highly regarded education system and a growing economy but they also have a net average tax rate per worker of 31.6 percent, a full six percent higher than the OECD average.
(New Zealand’s equivalent number is 21.1 percent.)
The Finnish government’s 88 billion euro annual budget provides school lunches to every student every day. That’s the sort of activity a highly taxed economy can afford. It’s the way Finland has looked after its school children for over 80 years.
Therefore what Finland does is irrelevant. We pay less tax here, and New Zealand children have traditionally taken their own lunch to school.
The answer to Seymour’s question about whether it’s the role of the Education Ministry to pay for a child’s lunch is a resounding no.
The Ministry has been a spectacular failure delivering learning outcomes so it’s hardly surprising it couldn’t provide an efficient school lunch service either.
What we have, and have had for two or possibly three generations, is an increasing number of hopeless parents.
Anybody who has done it for any length of time knows that making kids school lunches doesn’t take much time and doesn’t cost much.
A quick check of New World prices this week reveals Pam’s White or Wholemeal bread is $1.19, 500 grams of butter is $5.69, a pottle of honey $6.59, Vegemite is $4.59, a kilogram of cheese is $10.19, chocolate chip biscuits are $4.39 and a bag of apples $5.99.
Therefore the ingredients for the kind of lunches that kids have eaten for years cost $38.63. There’s enough in that list, with the addition of another packet or two of bread, to feed one child for at least two weeks.
What those prices prove is that a child’s school lunch can be made at home for about $4.
You have to be a rather pathetic parent if you can’t afford that. All it takes is a bit of planning and about 10 minutes of your time of a morning or the night before.
Seymour is right to ask the question about whether education should pay for school lunches. He’s lost the argument for now and there will be $478 million of taxpayers money set aside to pay for the job that parents should be doing.
The funding is locked in till 2026 – election year – and school lunches will no doubt be an issue when we go to the polls that year.
Labour supporters like Sir Ian believe it is the role of the government to feed children at school.
But if you can’t feed your child, you have no right to be a parent.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
I have nothing against lunches being provided by schools, but it should come out of the welfare benefits that are supposed to be paying for these kids.
100% correct Peter! Just because sushi etc is now commonplace in NZ, doesn’t mean the Government should provide it free of charge to students whose parents are either so disorganised they can’t make school lunches or they would rather have a cappuccino than put the money to better use and buy their children nourishing food. Keep providing lunches at the taxpayers’ expense and keep expecting the uptake to increase, whether it is needed or not, hence wastage.
It is not really about school lunches though is it. What it's really about, is getting people used to the state controlling every aspect of their lives. If you make your own lunch, your own money and your own destiny, then you are free aren't you? You can't have people thinking like that in this day and age Peter!
To Sir Ian Taylor - was the Sir for contributions to cognitive dissonance? Playschool doesn’t make you intelligent.
If Sushi improved educational outcomes then how come we didn’t see improvements?
Sandwiches, fruit & a treat were good enough for all of us for decades, including you & your kids & you all did quite well, didn’t you?
Ditch the woke, gain some critical thinking & rejoin reality - it is liberating.
Absolutely correct, Peter. So when is it the taxpayer's obligation to feed the offspring of others? It all goes back to personal responsibility. And we wonder why our GDP is falling; we are admidst a cost of living crisis; and we have a country with an increasing number of ne'er do wells.
"But if you can’t feed your child, you have no right to be a parent."
That is literally the bottom line, to have children when there is little prospect of giving them the necessary nurture is the very definition of child cruelty. If you cannot do this basic, right thing then just keep it in your trousers!
I'd love to do some research on this, particularly the knock-on benefits of school lunches to local pubs and shops that sell cigarettes. My guess is that for every dollar spent on school lunches in that community there will be one dollar more going into booze and ciggies.
Its very true that we should live in a country where parents feed their own kids. Afterall, the average employer doesnt give their staff lunches everyday so why should schools be different? I do note however that we should also have a country where parents can actually afford to feed their kids and with the cost of living crisis and the incredible unaffordability of housing more and more families are struggling to do that. So I would support addressing the cost of living, housing and inflation first, and then removing school lunches.
Schools should concentrate on educating children in the basics which in this country they are failing to do with an increasing decline in our national and international scores.
When I was at school in the mid 1950s the school provided free parent made vegetable soup in the winter ladled into a child's personal mug along with the bottle of milk, of course. Earlier I believe free apples were handed out as well.
From about nine old upwards my children made their own lunches for school. They chose themselves what they wanted, with some restrictions. This reduced waste since they were not given items they didn't like.
Tremendous waste is the issue in school lunches and I saw that when I was given food scraps from a pre-school. This included apples with one bite taken out of them and similarly for other food . My pet pig loved these scraps but I threw all the abundant (unhealthy) cake and biscuits into the compost.
I agree with Peter but consider a compromise of supplying some healthy stuff, and have the home provide the cheaper items of bread. Soup is difficult for a small child to carry to school.
I tire of comparisons with Finland. It is a northern European monoculture, something we ceased to predominantly be decades ago. I question the link between food and abiity. is it just that the genetically smarter children of the smart are better fed? I alwyas went a mile home for lunch, by foot or bike. For decades at work Itreated myself to 6 bread butter and jam sandwiches for lunch. I wonnder what I could have acheived on sushi. Incidentally does honey have any nutritional value?
In this age of sliced bread seems even the quite young should be able to prepare their own basisc lunch. What does annoy me is seeing the very many overweight devour a free lunch. Many (burly) children buy pies etc on the way to/from school. The same money in contents would provide an excellent cold lunch.
Why can't the Minister of Finance reappropriate $400 million for school lunches and $80 million for cancer treatment . Same amount allocated , small reduction in lunches overall and massive health benefit for NZ cancer sufferers . Importantly each cancer patient has extended family that suffer as well.
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