Putting the health of children first

In the first year of its implementation, Milk for Schools delivered 3 million litres of milk around the country.

In February 2013, Fonterra began a national roll-out of its Milk for Schools programme, which aims to provide all schools that want to participate with a free 250ml carton of Anchor Lite milk for all Year 1-6 children on every school day. The company also funds the delivery of the milk, a fridge to chill it in and the wherewithal to recycle the empty cartons.

The scheme is entirely voluntary and it's up to the schools, the kids and their families to decide whether they'll participate. Such is its popularity that in early 2014 a total of 1450 schools representing some 170,000 children were participating. In the first year, Milk for Schools delivered almost 3 million litres of milk to kids around the country.

In Fonterra's words, "Nothing is more important than the health of our kids. We believe Fonterra Milk for Schools can make a lasting difference to kids' health and we're committed to getting Kiwi kids drinking more milk". While today's kids are happily lining up for their carton of chilled milk each day, their grandparents probably have very different memories of milk in schools.

During the 1930s there was much debate regarding a government proposal for a school milk scheme. It was trialled in some areas, and the response to it was mixed. If this school principal's argument, published in the Auckland Star on January 13, 1936, is anything to go by, not much has changed in the past 70 years:

"Why should the teacher be responsible for the child's diet, in addition to dental clinic duties and many other things which have been introduced in the last few years, making in the aggregate serious inroads upon the time allotted to teaching the subjects on the school curriculum?" Mr Wooler, headmaster of Point Chevalier School asked.

"There is a feeling among those who have gained experience owing to the experiment that if the scheme is to be continued as a school measure weakly children should be selected and given a ration of milk daily. This should be delivered to schools in half-pint, sealed bottles and the children should be given a straw each day through which to drink the milk from the bottle. They would then have the milk clean and there would be no fear of contamination."

Mr Wooler didn't get his way regarding the restriction of the scheme to "weakly children", but he did get his wish regarding the half-pint bottle and the straw. On March 1, 1937, the government's scheme came into effect in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin before being rolled out around the rest of the country.

Brought into being by the first Labour government, the scheme had two aims.

The first was to improve the health of schoolchildren and provide them with nutrients they may not have been receiving at home, as the 1930s had seen the entire country in the grip of the Great Depression.

The second goal of the scheme was to use up a milk surplus and provide a guaranteed contract to milk suppliers around the country.

The milk was delivered to stands at school gates, and from there it was up to the schools to ensure it was transferred to the children, usually by way of students appointed as milk monitors. While milk suppliers aimed to deliver later in the morning, this didn't always happen, resulting in the milk being even warmer than usual.

It seems that not many people remember the scheme fondly. Most recollections of it involve drinking warm milk, having first battled through an unappealing plug of cream that blocked the top of the bottle -- a problem that was later resolved when milk treatment stations began homogenising the milk.

Despite the bad memories school milk seems to evoke, the scheme continued for 30 years until it was abolished by the Holyoake government in 1967 on the grounds that it was expensive and no longer necessary from a health perspective.