Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, February 5th, 2009 - 99 comments
Categories: education, national/act government -
Tags: anne tolley
Education Minister Anne Tolley has just put out a press release announcing the following:
‘As part of the National Government’s commitment to reducing compliance for schools, I have decided to remove the clause in National Administration Guideline (5) which states ‘where food and beverages are sold on schools’ premises, to make only healthy options available’.
It appears requiring schools to feed our kids healthy food to encourage proper eating habits, reduce obesity and help them concentrate in class was just too much for Anne Tolley.
Much better to change the law so the state can sell our kids obesity-causing junk food and, as an added bonus, help improve the profit margins of multinational food companies like Coca-Cola and Nestle. After all, businesses hit by the recession need all the government help they can get.
Hat tip: Farrar.
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What a disgrace!!!!
Tolley is like her leader……no brains and shouldnt be within a hundred miles of any responsibility!
Schools should not have the option as to what they can or cannot sell….they dont get the option as to what they teach do they?? NO!
Typical tory brain fade…….
ak
No by the principal and the other board members.
Felix…. because many parents/children are incapable or too lazy to prepare a lunch and take it to school.
Kerry … Yes quite so all schools should have a manual which all trustees and teachers must apply to the letter on pain of death – God forbid they can decide the best way to manage things themselves.
hs
“because many parents/children are incapable or too lazy to prepare a lunch and take it to school.”
Yes, but what happened to “parent responsibility”? I don’t think you can argue both sides of this – either the school has a role in feeding kids or it doesn’t.
H/S
Well I hope you are standing down in the next elections. There is enough time to encourage some other candidates to stand, and there are some good training options for new members.
I think it is unfair that parents no longer at the school make decisions for the school for which there is no accountability to the current students and parents. Unless you stand at an election and plainly say – it is x number of years since I had children involved with the school so do you still want me considering there are other parents who could do the job? OK, you might have institutional memory, but things change, schools move on.
I am guessing but you probably supported that last failed Tory policy of bulk funding.
It is the parents’ responsibility to ensure that their children’s (NB THEIR children’s) nutritional requirements are met. A school (which schools as opposed to educates), cannot be expected or required to usurp this responsibility. End of debate as I see it.
Returning to this site after a month or so it surprises me that the label “Tory” continues to be bandied about by so many contributors. Why? The Tory Party existed in the UK in the 19th century so why use the name in a local context in the 21st century? It is an out-dated label so it possibly sits sweetly in this blog of ongoing Clark/Cullen worshippers…a bus-load on the road to extinction. Happy motoring!
The problem with the legislation approach is that it deprives kids from making positive choices. If they don’t actually choose to eat healthy food at school then they will make poor choices after school.
A better approach is to get kids making their own food. This approach has been used before. Kids tend to more readily eat food they have made themselves. Teach them about healthy eating. Get them making healthy food. Get them eating what they have made.
Janet
I am guessing but you probably supported that last failed Tory policy of bulk funding.
………and I am guessing you’re a hand wronging moron.
and yes I would be delighted if more parents would put their hands up to be on school boards, fund raising committees etc, however from my experience of the several schools that my children have moved through and talking to my colleagues at work it tends to be a small group of the same parents who help out year after year with school fund raising, sports coaching and governance, much the same case in the sports clubs around NZ.
Felix
I think we’re of the same mind on this issue, but let me say that I think you can argue both sides ..parents do have a responsibility, that shouldn’t negate the schools ability to offer the choice of food at school ….or seeking advice/picking up the pieces if the staff can see that things are not as they should be with the child/student.
hs: and I am guessing you’re a hand wronging moron.
Eh what? Accusing Janet of finger-abuse now hs? Pardon me for surmising that you and you alter-ego, “global worming” burt, are far more likely to be guilty of that particular practice… (facking tury wonkers…makes you sock…)
ak
better a facking tury wonker than a sicilist tisser…….. bit siresly all the pidgin hilling piple inti clisses seems to bi rither privalent on the blogs and is IMO a load of complete derisive shite
Thanks National, its the schools job to teach our kids and our job to feed them.
There are lots of choices out there in the big bad world so the sooner they learn to cope with them the better.
As I stated previously I am on a school board we have rules regarding what kids are or aren’t allowed in their lunch boxes as we have rules about mobile phones, ipods etc etc we also only allow certain foods to be sold at school . we do not need a a regulatory sledgehammer that will achieve not one iota to change the obesity epidemic . which might better be described people being slothful, lazy gluttons.
I’m puzzled HS – why do you bother with your regulations at school? You’re opposed to a regulatory sledgehammer, and yet you are using one? Regulations won’t make one iota of difference, and yet you have them?
Just btw, I did my term on a school board too, where we booted out the junk food, because it was just so obviously the right thing to do. Ask almost any teacher.
“I’m puzzled HS – why do you bother with your regulations at school? You’re opposed to a regulatory sledgehammer, and yet you are using one? Regulations won’t make one iota of difference, and yet you have them?”
r0b, if you’re unable or unwilling to see the difference between a government regulation and a school board regulation then I’m afraid it’s just a reflection on you more than anything you could possibly have to say on the subject.
“Just btw, I did my term on a school board too, where we booted out the junk food, because it was just so obviously the right thing to do. Ask almost any teacher.”
To hell with choice and responsibility or education regarding healthy eating, right r0b? Just ban it and the problem will go right away! After all, teachers agree!
On a more serious note, why do you feel it was the obvious choice? Was it because almost a decade of government funded healthy eating education was carried out with no real impact? Don’t you think that suggests that central government have no clue as to how to run such an undertaking?
r0b you appear to be a complete moron why are you berating someone who’s doing a good job on a school board just because they disagree with compulsion by a government you seem to fawn over.
It’s convenient and fun to frame this as a debate about responsibility, rights and choice but lets not let ideology blind us to what it’s really about – feeding kids up on sugar, saturated fat, white flour and meat by-products because they like the taste.
That’s what we’re actually talking about – the “right” to let kids “choose” to eat crap.
This might come as a shock to some of you but we actually tell kids what to do all the time. We don’t allow kids to make their own decisions because (drumroll….) they’re feckin kids. They’re not responsible. They make stupid decisions, so adults have to make most of the decisions for them.
There is an adult responsible for every child at all times. From 9 – 3 weekdays that adult is the school.
Yes, it’s primarily the parents’ place to look after a child’s nutrition, but while they’re at school, on school property, during school hours, the school takes on most of the responsibilities of guardianship.
During those hours the school certainly can – and should – dictate what kids can or can’t put in their bodies. Just like parents do the rest of the time.
Felix,
Can you provide a rational, scientific justification for banning sugar, fat, flour, and meat? As I believe all these things are healthy.
Ie ate all of these things profusely while at school and had a below average BMI.
I now have an above average BMI. This is a common pattern I believe (BMI increasing with age). Surely the risk of these foods is an issue for older people and therefore if they should be banned, it would be prudent to do this everywhere but schools.
Really? That’s your response? A diet of sugar, saturated fat, white flour and meat by-products is healthy?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Ok then. Smoking and drinking is good for you. It prevents you from getting herpes. I know this because I’ve been smoking and drinking for 30 years and I still don’t have herpes.
Prove me wrong, scientifically and rationally please.
But seriously, my whole point is that adults can make that choice. Kids can’t. We make it for them and we should make it a good choice from the start because we don’t actually want them to grow up and eat shit food all their lives.
(Well maybe you do, but that’s because you own a fast food business.)
Sorry kiddies (Dean, will), wasn’t talking to you. The question re HS’s completely contradictory and illogical position was addressed to HS.
“Sorry kiddies (Dean, will), wasn’t talking to you. The question re HS’s completely contradictory and illogical position was addressed to HS.”
You once again set the standard, r0b. Glad to see some things never change.
r0b
I think you answered your own question
“Just btw, I did my term on a school board too, where we booted out the junk food, because it was just so obviously the right thing to do. Ask almost any teacher.’
This is the place where the appropriate decision should be taken on an individual school basis rather than the sledge hammer approach of of central government as it allows latitude to run fund raisers and other programmes at a local school level without the school having to worry about things that are fairly irrelevant.
Felix
A diet of sugar, saturated fat, white flour and meat by-products is healthy?
Certainly a diet containing this products is healthy as long as it’s supplemented with other foods and plenty of exercise – which is often the missing ingredient in many kids lives – for example I arranged for the local supermarket to provide free oranges and apples to the kids over a term in exchange for certain advertising rights would we do the same with MacDonalds or Coke ……no. But is a fund raiser where we sell fizzie drinks, sausages etc appropriate every now and again you bet.
On a separate but related note the success of any school has far more to do with the principal/teachers and board/parents than it will ever have to do with central government and their many scurrying prats.
hs I broadly agree. Of course the key word is “containing”.
At the end of the day I expect school boards to make good decisions for their students. Official guidelines of some sort are probably a better tool than strict regulation for this sort of thing.
Thanks Felix
I think you’re quite right to expect and demand that school boards make good decisions for the students and I think that’s what the vast amount of them try to do.
Scanned through the comments and have seen no mention of what I thought would be an obvious point
Junk food tends to be manufactured by large companies operating with economies of scale. They seek profit and market share. Their products contain very cheap and crap ingredients, sell for less than a non-junk option but spin more profit.
Poverty. Lunch money. ‘Options’. Join the dots.
And. If kids prefer the taste of junk food…high sugar and salt plus a multitude of potent chemical flavourings, is that a reason to manufacture and sell such food, or is it maybe a reason to re-educate the palates of kids with good (ie tasty) healthy food?
Given the health impacts I’d argue the latter. And how to do that without levelling the playing field somewhat through legislation?
r0b I think you answered your own question
My position is consistent HS, I believe in regulation within schools, and also regulation by law (to compell schools that don’t do it for themselves), because I think regulation is effective and addresses a serious problem.
You don’t believe in regulation unless you are the one doing it (in your own school). You don’t believe regulation will make “one iota” of difference unless you’re the one doing it (in your own school). It seems on the face of it like a good example of a typical right wing fallacy, they are always opposed to regulation unless they are the ones doing the regulating.
r0b
Ha ha you seem to be the one that believes in regulation by central government as long as it is something you agree with……… I bored arguing this point anymore, suffice to say that I believe the current directive by the Minster is more sensible the previous one.
I bored arguing this point anymore
Jolly good then.
Where have you been anyway ?
Here and there through SE Asia. My head is not much in the NZ political space right now, and internet access is occasional, but I peek at The Standard from time to time.
Hope you’re having fun.