Free School lunches have a profound beneficial effect on learning
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11:23 am, September 13th, 2024 - 23 comments
Categories: david seymour, education, politicans, poverty, uncategorized -
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Before cutting the budget for free school lunches by $107 million the Government was told in no uncertain terms that this was a really, really daft thing to do.
The details are in this Radio New Zealand article and the comments referred to include these:
Emerging findings support previous evaluation findings, but also highlight further benefits of the programme, including improvements in achievement and the importance of universality … [t]his includes that learners are more settled and able to engage with classroom activity and learning, with some schools showing increased academic achievement resulting from an enhanced learning experience from being more settled and less distracted. Initial findings also indicate that the programme is having a profound impact on the wellbeing of learners”.
And there is a very important reason why the scheme has to be universal rather than targeted:
Feedback from schools, teachers, and learners was that student-level targeting (‘means-testing’) requires learners to self-identify as in-need, which generates a stigma, shame, and whakamā so significant that they will, in almost every situation, refuse to engage with free kai programmes”.
Earlier evaluations found the scheme resulted in happier and healthier children.
And Seymour’s attempt to cut costs to less than that of a daily coffee could result in the scheme falling over.
The most significant risk from the proposal is that we have not market-tested or otherwise analysed the proposed $3 per head price. We do not know whether sufficient supply exists to offer lunches to the specified standard at this price across the full range of schools”.
David Seymour in typical style described the expenditure as wasteful spending.
Free school lunches were a really effective tax cut and considerable assistance to the poorest among us. And it shows what this Government’s policies are. Better to give a tax cut to a rich landlord than to a poor struggling family.
Shame on them.
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Heads up to watch LastWeekTonight with John Oliver, on at 12:30pm today on SOHO Sky10 if you have it.
The episode is called School Lunch: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), this is the YouTube link although it's not available at the moment. It puts a valuable perspective on the history of school lunches in this country.
Read about this episode here:
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-guardian-usa/20240910/282016152700423
I saw that the other day. I like how he mixes in comedy with reasonably in depth topic analysis.
Things must be tight when we can’t afford school lunches yet we can give Landord’s a $2.9 Billion Tax Cut. He is just like his predecessor Roger the Rat who wanted to Tax Paper Boys?
Hot nutritious meals downgraded to dried out sandwiches–what more could $3 provide?
What a vindictive position from Act…don’t feed the kids…but do open a new Ministry with people on $150,000 salaries.
As well as learning outcomes the cuts will also impact on small businesses that provide the meals in various communities.
Sandwiches are what I took to school every day when I was at school. They are nutritious, and nothing wrong with them.
Plus, an army of people isn't required to cook and clean up afterwards.
The army of people is one of the things that's great about school lunches. Especially if they are local people, a mixture of volunteers and paid workers, sourcing stuff from local suppliers, encouraging donations etc. If done right, it might be a wonderful piece of community-building – plus a nice example of the social value of economic inefficiency, a cheery, one-figured salute to lunatic neo-classical economists.
Sandwiches are a good lunch if you are getting two other nutritious meals that day as well i.e. breakfast and dinner. If lunch is going to be the backbone meal than sandwiches aren't enough, especially during winter.
Yes. I took sandwiches to school.
But my low income parents could, back in the day, afford to always keep fruit, and plenty of other food in the house, and cook a lamb roast and three vege every Sunday.
Many families now, after paying the rent to the house scalpers, can barely afford the bread!
Right on cue granny gives rimmer a soapbox to distract with allegations he wants the ministry to investigate.
NZME are a huge part of the problem.
Once again, the blame is on the people who voted for any of the CoC parties. They cannot say they had no idea of the social damage that would happen under a RW government. This is completely on them; they provided the means for this to happen.
Our very own MAGA idiots……
For me this is just another blatant example of rank hypocricy on display.
Classically these right wing types don't approve of centralization. Yet here is Gordon Britta's centralising food which undermines it's freshness, flavour and appeal.
Like his ministry of
more consultants on the public teat redtape, spending $400,000 to outside contractors.If it were to be run by AI, I can see how the logarithm would make the Act party redundant with it's $4M Bill to Nowhere, and this shit show around kids lunches.
Less food in schools for those over 11, more teens working to get fed and help pay the rent.
https://archive.li/1f9KK
WTF…
I guess we know of another source of donations to the coalition’s political parties
The CCCFA is crazy. Any young teenager working in a clothing shop can suggest to a customer they sign up to a BNPL scheme, even if the customer says they cannot afford the goods. As far as I can tell the BNPL providers don’t need to undertake any due diligence on the customer, they can just rely on the fact that a bank has provided the customer with a Visa/Mastercard debit or credit card.
But interestingly if you wish to open an additional bank account, say to save for a holiday, the banker must follow the due process to ensure that the customer is fully informed, give the relevant disclosure to the customer. At best it’s a 5 to 10 minute conversation, for the most basic of customer needs, even though no lending is involved.
So many of their policies that you look at and think the only way this makes any sense whatsoever is if money changed hands.
A dumb thing to do but that matters little in ACT's ideological desire to prove the old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Ideology over common sense is so ACT.
Just wondering whether, and if so how much, MPs are allocated for lunch during days when parliament sits.
I keep thinking back to Luxon's $60 per week grocery budget and thinking there has to be a top up from the public purse somewhere. He doesn't have time to go dumpster diving, busy man that he is.
Anyone know?
Evidently the teachers are now stealing the kids lunches. That will probably stop when they start getting dry bread and cheese with a little bit of marmite on the sandwiches.
Well at least they are not eating the cats and dogs……
We should have a look at the Japanese School Lunch System that's how a First World Country operates, amazing Seymore can just change something that is working into something that will not work. Just shows how stupid we are here in NZ.
Seymour doesn't want the State education system to work.
He wants it to fail so it can be replaced with the privatised disaster they have in the USA.
Just as they have already succeeded in killing our primary healthcare, aged care and pre school education, with profit taking private providers.