An Auckland school that was a poster child for the KickStart breakfast programme says the number of children coming to school hungry has dropped - because about one in every six has gone to Australia.
Wesley Intermediate, a decile 1 school in Mt Roskill where former Fonterra boss Andrew Ferrier helped serve breakfast in 2009, still feeds 30 to 40 of its 130 students with Fonterra milk and Sanitarium's Weet-Bix on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
But principal Nigel Davis said the programme was needed "probably more in some other schools than our own at the moment" and would extend to five days a week with the new government funding only if local volunteers could handle it.
"In the past we could have done it every day because there was a real big need," he said. "Back in 2009 it was really quite noticeable that kids were not eating breakfast. It's not so much now."
But he said there had not been any upturn in jobs for the children's parents. Instead, families had gone to Australia and had not been replaced because houses had been taken to extend Auckland's southwestern motorway.
