Government told free school lunches have 'profound impact on wellbeing' before funding cuts
Government told free school lunches have 'profound impact on wellbeing' before funding cuts
A yet-to-be published study also found achievement improved at some schools participating in the Ka Ora, Ka Ako scheme.
Budget documents show the government was told of "profound" wellbeing benefits from the free school lunch scheme months before it decided to trim its funding.
The research was supposed to be published in June but was still under wraps.
However, Budget papers published this week referred to the study's early findings.
"Emerging findings support previous evaluation findings, but also highlight further benefits of the programme, including improvements in achievement and the importance of universality," said a December briefing note to Minister of Education Erica Stanford.
"This 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," it said.
Earlier this year, the government cut annual funding for the scheme by $107 million, reducing the per-student spend for children at intermediate and secondary schools to $3.
A March briefing paper about changing the model for Ka Ora, Ka Ako said it was not clear whether lunches could be provided at that price.
"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," the document said.
TL;DR this government that is so focused on educational achievement, was given evidence that providing school lunches lifted achievement. So they decided to cut funding to school lunches.
After public pushback, they said they would keep school lunches but cut funding to a level that schools probably can't actually provide lunches at.
I really hope they don’t cut the Counselling in Schools programme.
A scheme that provides counselling in more than 200 primary schools makes distressed children feel better, improves behaviour, and raises attendance.
An Education Review Office (ERO) report - published today - provides evidence that Counselling in Schools, a $44-million scheme introduced in 2021, worked well.
Teachers told review officers the scheme reduced disciplinary problems and children who received counselling were less likely to "punch first, talk later".
Encouragingly, eight in 10 students report improved psychological health after receiving counselling, and students with the most psychological distress have the largest improvement. Of the 71 percent of students who entered counselling reaching the clinical cut-off for distress, almost half no longer reach the cut-off for psychological distress at the end of counselling. This is a very positive outcome."
This seems to be one of the most effective mental health initiatives of recent times and hits a number of National’s supposed priorities. Unfortunately though I don’t have much faith that they’ll keep investing in it.
Oh funny - I just posted Max Rashbrooke's article on the impact of changes from The Spinoff and that's my take too - school lunches = achievement, we are worried about achievement, so let's cut lunches. Seymour is actually cartoonishly evil at times.
As usual, the feelings of politicians trump evidence.
NAFf feel that tax cuts are more important than the kids, so we get tax cuts.
Well, we also get a complete rewrite of the curriculum and a forced 3 hours of reading, writing, maths a day (out of approx 4.5-5 hours of school time each day once you take out morning tea and lunch) because this government is so worried about educational achievement. But it's again that idea of looking like they are doing something. Rewriting the curriculum and setting forced time for the 3 R's is something they can stand up and say "look, we're doing stuff" where as school lunches were already in place so there was nothing for them to show to their voters.