Principal on government lunch waste: Sort your systems out
A principal says schools need to ‘‘sort their systems out’’ if they have stacks of leftover government lunches rejected by students.
Stuff revealed on Wednesday that thousands of lunches in the Ka Ora, Ka Ako programme were going uneaten by students each week.
The Government is not counting the numbers of uneaten lunches in the multimillion-dollar scheme.
Nawton Primary School principal Rubina Charman told
Stuff schools needed to adjust their orders to avoid food waste.
‘‘[Food wastage] is a logistic thing for schools, and that can be easily fixed, adjust your numbers. If you’re wasting food, adjust your numbers.
‘‘They need to sort their systems out.’’
Bite L.A.B, provider of 9000 Waikato lunches, requires schools to give 10 days’ notice if the number of lunch orders changes on any given day.
At Nawton Primary School, 98 per cent of the parents have signed up for the lunches. The other 2 per cent pack their own lunches. The school shut the canteen and has a staff member who organises and counts the lunches each day, Charman said.
On days with popular food options, like yesterday’s meat and salad wraps, there would be almost no leftovers. On Wednesday, the less liked pasta resulted in 16 leftover lunches out of about 400.
Year 7 student Potiki Te Wiata, 11, confirmed his favourite meals were the wraps and chicken sandwiches, and his least favourite the pasta.
Charman said it was easier to change young children’s taste: ‘‘It’s about knowing that introducing new food takes time.’’
She said more parents were able to buy more new school jumpers than ever before.
‘‘I’ve heard parents telling me they were saving money on a loaf of bread a day and margarine too.’’
Schools could ‘‘help each other out’’ to improve the uptake of the programme, she said.
Fairfield College principal Richard Crawford told Stuff the school needed time to be ‘‘more nimble’’ about lunch supply. The school could be left with between 20 and 200 extra lunches each day. That often depended on unexpected student absence.
Crawford said he was a taxpayer too and appreciated people may be concerned about the money spent on untouched lunches.
‘‘The food that’s left over will always go to somebody who needs the food,’’ he said.
He strongly believed students should not be means-tested for a lunch.
‘‘I see this as a game-changer for some of our students, knowing that what was previously a barrier for them is no longer a barrier – that they are going to have nutritious food to partake of during the day.’’
Teenagers could be fussy, Crawford said.
But 17-year-olds Meleane Tonga and Tupoutu’a Tausisi found the lunches, in general, were ‘‘amazing’’.
‘‘It’s the best feeling when you just can wake up and get dressed and come to school without thinking about what you’re going to eat.’’
Like Nawton Primary students, the chicken wraps were a hit. But Tonga said she saw lots of waste when students rejected a lunch.
‘‘It’s amazing seeing the amount of waste of that lunch going to the bin, if the kids don’t like it they just put it in the bin.’’
Tausisi agreed some lunches just didn’t work.
‘‘The bread with cheese only, we never eat bread with cheese only, there’s always meat in there.’’