Source: Health Coalition Aotearoa
A damning Audit Office report on the Healthy School Lunches Programme is in line with research by experts from Health Coalition Aotearoa.
The report delivered to Parliament on 30 June found the cut-price programme, ordered by Associate Education Minister David Seymour in 2024, has made savings but has had multiple issues with the procurement process, food quality, waste and monitoring.
The Ministry of Education’s monitoring found, in 2025, only half of the school lunches met nutritional standards.
“Yes, there were cost-savings with the School Lunch Collective’s cut-price school lunch programme, but Minister Seymour did not talk about the ‘effectiveness’ side of the ‘cost-effectiveness’ equation,” says Health Coalition Aotearoa co-chair Professor Boyd Swinburn, a researcher on population nutrition at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.
“There was no evaluation of effectiveness – the last version, Ka Ora Ka Ako, was heavily evaluated and came out showing significant improvements on nutrition, school attendance, quality of life and full tummies.”
Swinburn led one evaluation finding the original Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme rated extremely well against its primary outcomes of alleviating hunger in schools, providing healthy meals, improving mental health, reducing financial burden, increasing mana, and strengthening local economies. Read more.
This is in a context where a report out this morning (1 July) found one in six households are living in income poverty after housing costs, just over one in ten have to go without essential items regularly, and one in three households experienced food insecurity in the last year. ( NZ Council of Christian Social Services report 1 July 2026.)
An analysis found that students in Aotearoa who go hungry due to lack of money, even just once a week, are two to four years behind in their achievement scores compared to students who never go hungry. (See McKelvie Sebileau P, Swinburn B, Seymour J: Frontiers in Education Jan 2025.)
The strong focus on cost-cutting has led to multiple problems, Swinburn says.
The Ministry’s data for meals assessed in 2025 showed that on average only 50.5% of the School Lunch Collective meals complied with the nutrition standards, the Audit Office report says.
However, public health and nutrition researchers at Health Coalition Aotearoa tested school lunches in 2025 and found the meals were very low in energy (kJ), providing approximately half of the energy expected for a school lunch and 30 to 40 percent less than lunches provided under the previous Ka Ora Ka Ako model.
“Of the 13 meals that could be analysed against at least one of the Nutrition Standards, none met all standards for all age groups,” the researchers said in a PHCC briefing.
“Based on available information, the School Lunch Collective is delivering substandard lunches to children, which is a major breach of their contractual requirements,” the researchers said.
Dr Kelly Garton, a food policy spokesperson for Health Coalition Aotearoa and senior research fellow in the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland comments that the report finds the programme was unfairly procured, ignored risks with the suppliers, one of which went into liquidation, and has not been properly measured, monitored and managed.
“What has been measured shows poor performance on key target outcomes, chiefly that half the lunches, on average, are not meeting the nutrition standards,” says Garton.
“Despite the changes being justified as ways to reduce surplus and waste, neither of these have been managed effectively: surplus (untouched or overdelivered lunches) increased to 17 percent in 2026, despite a contractual limit of 10 percent, and waste (measured in Term 3 2025) was higher for the School Lunch Collective delivery model than internal school-based and iwi models.
“Schools and students report receiving poor-quality lunches, with many going uneaten due to being unappetising.
“Slashing funding isn’t ‘delivering savings’ if you are actively undermining programme delivery,” says Garton.
“Our tamariki deserve better. It’s time to revert to proper funding for this essential programme which was delivering excellent value for investment before 2025, according to independent evaluation.”
Health Coalition Aotearoa’s researchers are calling for a properly and permanently funded Ka Ora Ka Ako Healthy School Lunch Programme, paid for from Vote Education.
“We have got to go for version three. We’ve had version one – it was generously funded and had good outcomes,” Swinburn says.
“We have a low-cost version now. It has saved money but has problems that have been highlighted by the Auditor General. Let’s get a version three that works for taxpayers, kids and meets nutritional standards.”
This year, the incoming government must commit permanent Vote Education funding to Ka Ora, Ka Ako healthy school lunch programme at a fair and sustainable level, enabling providers to supply meals that meet at least 25 percent of children’s daily energy needs and dietary guidelines, and offer schools flexible delivery options, HCA’s food researchers say.
It is time to do better for our tamariki, their long-term futures and the future of Aotearoa.
- HCA is a coalition of member organisations committed to closing the health prevention gap in Aotearoa by advocating for Te Tiriti-led, evidence-based, policies that reduce consumption of harmful products and increase access to health-giving food.