How good have school lunches been in term two?

The school lunch programme has been a "success by any measure" in term two, says the minister in charge, citing numbers that show complaints are down and on-time deliveries are up.

But the opposition says the programme has not been fixed, and a school principal is pointing out that the issue of quality has not been resolved.

Chris Patel, principal of Kopuarahi school near Thames, told RNZ it was "really sad" children no longer anticipated meal time like they did during the previous lunch programme.

She said complaints might be down because schools were resigned to the current programme.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour launched a cut-price version of the scheme this year, but it was plagued by reports of late, inedible, repetitive and nutritionally questionable lunches.

One meal contained melted plastic, another left a student with burns.

The Auditor-General's office had announced plans for an inquiry into the programme after concerns were raised both in the media and directly with them.

Seymour told RNZ he marked himself 8/10 for Term 2, compared to a 4/10 for Term 1 "at best".

"Yes, there were problems. We owned them. We never denied them, and we fixed them. I think that there's a very good story in that," said Seymour.

He pointed to the stats from the last term showing more than 98 percent of lunches were delivered on time each day, and complaints were down by 92 percent since March.

He also said student satisfaction was at 67 percent, up from 46 percent the previous term, and pondered the lack of media coverage "now the programme is a success".

He explained the programme got more trucks and streamlined delivery routes to help deliver lunches on time. Equipment was also upgraded, and staff numbers increased "to increase meal production and control quality better".

"Production is now exceeding daily targets, and two million meals are expected to be ready for distribution by the start of Term 3."

He called the programme a "real triumph", pointing to the amount of money saved by the taxpayer.

"We took on one of the most ambitious challenges and programs that New Zealand has ever seen in the food industry in order to save the taxpayer $170 million a year.

"The way that people view it, I believe, says more about people's disposition towards ambition and problem solving than the scheme itself."

He said if the previous Labour government had "done it our way", there would be $800 million less debt on the government's books, "debt that unfortunately will be inherited by the very children at school today".

He said since the beginning of Term 1 this year, more than 13.8 million nutritious meals had been delivered to 242,000 students in 1011 schools.

"This marks the first time a single national supplier has provided meals at such scale, let alone meals which children enjoy, are nutritious, and are delivered on time."

'Still a significant amount of complaints'

But Labour's education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime did not accept the programme was fixed.

"David Seymour said that everything would be sorted by term two for the debacle that has been the school lunch programme, and he's boasting delivery times as one of the key metrics."

She also pointed out there had been such a high level of complaints to start with, a "92 percent drop still means there's a significant amount of complaints that are being made",

She criticised these metrics as a measure for considering the success of the programme, and said there was a seeming lack of transparency from the minister around the issue of wastage.

"We have been trying to get the information from the minister about the level of waste, and he refuses to tell us what is going into pig buckets and only what is being returned unopened and uneaten."

Information gathered by Labour pointed to about 200,000 lunches returned in one half of term two. The party said at $3 per lunch, that amounted to nearly $600,000 wasted.

"We have seen children not eating their lunches, not having full tummies and therefore reaching their learning potential," Prime said.

"This minister is looking at this particular initiative as an economic initiative, as opposed to an education initiative.

"He is simply looking at how much savings can be made from this programme and giving our children the scraps."

Prime gave both term one and term two a "thumbs down".

In response, a spokesperson for Seymour told RNZ an average 8 percent of lunches had been reported as surplus, compared to 9 percent in Term 4 of 2023 under Labour's scheme.

'It's not filling their tummies'

Chris Patel, principal of Kopuarahi school near Thames, acknowledged the numbers looked better this term, but said less complaints might just mean schools were resigned to the programme.

She sent daily messages to those in charge in term one, and said some of her colleagues were surprised she'd kept up that process.

"I think there's a meal fatigue.

"You know that no amount of giving feedback is going to make a difference, so... what's the point."

Patel wanted the programme to succeed but only gave term two a mark of 3.5/10. That's up only slightly from 2/10 in term one.

"As much as it's sad that we've got the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, I really do want it to succeed."

Part of her frustration, she said, was going from a system that had been working for the children at her school to one that was not really working now.

For Patel, and her students, it came down to an issue of quality and palatability.

"Despite I think the best intentions the School Lunch Collective may have, there's been very little movement on the quality of and palatability of the meals."

Her students would often only have "one, two, three, four mouthfuls" she said, despite sometimes having no food of their own.

"These are children who are hungry.

"Most of them come to school with some food from home or little or in a couple of cases, no food from home for one reason or another."

Patel said it was about how the country valued children.

"It says a lot about how we really don't value our kids, how we really don't value what we're doing to them.

"We're spending a lot of money and there's a - a lot of food is wasted. It's not filling their tummies, it's not doing - it's not hitting the spot. It's not doing what it was designed to do."

She said thought the problem was creating meals in bulk. "You can tell that they're made in bulk, they're not made with love.

"So it's all very well for minister Seymour and the prime minister to say, we're providing a meal, but if 60-80 percent of that meal goes back in the container it was delivered in... I question that. How sustainable is that?

"This is not about fussy kids."

Patel questioned what sort of "benchmark" on-time deliveries was.

"Yes, timeliness of delivery really is crucial. But actually the purpose of the lunches, is to build attendance, engagement and student achievement.

"Help take barriers away from kids learning."

Seymour said taste testing was under way for term three and so far there'd been 73 percent positive feedback.

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