Minister visits Otahuhu College School Lunch Collective. Video / Michael Craig
The school lunches programme has been widely criticised this week, with complaints of late delivery, with meals being too small or too hot.
The contractor behind the Healthy School Lunches programme, The School Lunch Collective – led by British company Compass Group – blames “teething problems” amid multiple complaints.
Minister David Seymour says he’s been assured that “processes will improve”.
Many schools affected by a bumpy start to the school lunches programme have “already lost confidence” in the service, New Zealand Principals Federation vice-president Jason Miles says.
They were more likely to be schools that have had problems every day with the delivery of the new lunches, Miles said.
“They want to return to their local delivery of school lunches, which were problem-free. As confidence wanes, more schools will want to return to their local school lunch service.”
Associate Education Minister David Seymour acknowledges this is “a difficult time for many” and says he’s been assured that “processes will improve”.
Students, their parents, principals and others have made multiple complaints about the lunches, with some not turning up or arriving late, while others were considered too small.
The contractor behind the Healthy School Lunches programme – The School Lunch Collective, led by British company Compass Group – has previously blamed “teething problems” as more than 127,000 lunches are sent around the country every school day.
They had apologised to those affected and were talking with schools to fix early issues, Compass Group managing director Paul Harvey said yesterday.
But principals had reported multiple issues, including lunches arriving as school ended for the day, Miles said.
“In multiple cases and in multiple regions, lunches have arrived before or later than the scheduled time. This disrupts the entire school programme and means many schools have had to unexpectedly use their curriculum funding to buy emergency school lunches.”
Associate Minister of Education David Seymour visits Ōtāhuhu College last week. Photo / Michael Craig
Schools also reported that in many cases the heated containers for the school lunches – and the lunches themselves – are too hot for the children to handle.
The seasons also weren’t factored in, with more fruit, cold salads and cold meats more appropriate in summer, the Kaiapoi North School principal said.
Attendance was linked to the delivery of school lunches, he said.
“Families that rely on children being fed at school are less likely to send their children to school when there is no certainty they will be fed.”
“The school lunch programme addresses that issue, but consistency and reliability is necessary.”
Seymour told the Herald the School Lunch Collective is working to bring their delivery process up to speed and ensure lunches are “consistently of the quality we expect”.
“The collective have assured me that the processes will improve and that the collective will work with principals to ensure that schools receive the smooth service the collective has committed to providing,” he said.
“If a school or kura have been notified that School Lunch Collective meals are expected to arrive after lunch time or do not arrive, schools can purchase food items for their students, the cost of which will be reimbursed.”
Seymour listed the steps the School Lunch Collective has taken to address some of the recent challenges:
Expanded delivery fleet to support timeliness of deliveries.
Brought in logistics expertise from Foodstuffs to review routes.
Increased the number of production kitchens in Auckland. The heating of meals is starting earlier.
A new supplier of special dietary meals will be joining the collective to resolve supply and labelling problems.
The SLC contact centre team has been doubled (to eight people). An 0800 number will be added from next week.
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