Our Parliament will shortly debate on the ‘Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill,’ to decide if there is a need to provide breakfast and lunch for children in some designated schools.
Contrary to popular opinion that poverty and undernourishment do not exist in a small country like New Zealand, thousands of families cannot afford a decent meal to their children. Worse, there are people who argue that it is the responsibility of families and not governments to keep children properly fed and nourished.
There can be no argument to the fact that today’s healthy children will make tomorrow’s healthy leaders. There could no excuse for a nation that spends billions of dollars on domestic purposes benefit and piles up hundreds of million dollars in unpaid student loans to allow its children starve.
Child nourishment should be treated on national priority.
For instance, in US, the ‘National School Lunch Programme is a federally assisted meal programme operating in over 100,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provided nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2011.
In 1998, the US Congress expanded the Programme to include reimbursement for snacks served to children in afterschool educational and enrichment programmes to include children through 18 years of age.
The Food and Nutrition Service administers the programme at the Federal level. At the State level, it is administered by State education agencies, which operate through agreements with school food authorities.
The ‘Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill,’ which is popularly known as ‘Feed the Kids Bill’ has noted a number of disturbing facts. It said that growing levels of poverty in New Zealand have resulted in too many parents being unable to afford to provide their children with breakfast before school and/or lunch at school, or being unable to afford to provide their children with sufficiently nutritious meals before and during school.
“Research conducted in New Zealand and overseas has demonstrated the positive benefits to the school attendance, learning achievement, and health of children and young people when nutritious meals are provided by schools,” it said.
While we hope that Parliament would pass the Bill into law and that the Government would legislate it without delay, we also believe that better-to-do institutions and private schools will also participate in the school lunch programme. Childcare institutions, large corporates and commercial banks should contribute towards the successful implementation of this programme.
The Government may also consider giving cash subsidies to schools that serve meals to needy children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children through age 18 in afterschool educational or enrichment programmes.
