9 Ka Ora, Ka Ako

HEALTHY SCHOOL LUNCHES PROGRAMME

The Ka Ora, Ka Ako | Healthy School Lunches programme aims to reduce food insecurity by providing access to a nutritious lunch in school every day. As of December 2021, over 47 million lunches were served in 921 schools to over 211,000 learners.

Ka Ora, Ka Ako is offered to schools and kura with students that fall within the highest 25 percent of socio-economic disadvantage nationally and where students face the greatest barriers that can affect access to education, wellbeing and achievement.

A range of factors are considered when selecting schools and kura to take part. The main tool used to determine the socioeconomic barriers present in a school’s community is the Ministry of Education Equity Index. This looks at a full basket of factors in a child’s life, not any one factor, to understand the socioeconomic barriers present in a school’s community. For example, family circumstances, income, number of home and school changes, and more. School deciles are not used as a measure of need.

Schools and communities are best placed to understand what their students need. Schools and kura can decide whether to make their own lunches or outsource to an external supplier.

External suppliers are selected through a tender process via the Government Electronic Tender Service (GETS)(external link) platform. Schools and kura choose from a panel of approved suppliers that have met minimum standards of food hygiene, waste management and food preparation.

There is no set lunch menu for the programme. Schools and suppliers decide what works best for them. What is included

in lunches will depend on several factors such as the chosen supplier, available catering facilities, the number of students, and a school’s distance from the chosen supplier. A typical weekly menu should include a variety of lunches such as wraps, vegetable sticks, dips, salads, soups, and hot lunches.

Menus may also change from term to term to reflect available fresh produce and the season, and any feedback from schools and students.

The Pathway to Nutrition

Children’s tastes vary and many are not familiar with healthy foods, which can make providing healthy food that gets good uptake from students challenging. Supporting children to enjoy new foods can take time.

The Ministry of Education has created The Pathway to Nutrition to provide support on how to gradually introduce healthy foods without losing student engagement along the way. Guidance includes how to build and adapt menus to align with the Ministry of Health’s healthy food and drink guidance for schools and Ka Ora, Ka Ako nutrition guidance over the first six months of the contract, in ways that gives students time to learn to enjoy new foods in a supportive environment.

Basic Requirements

on their nutritional value using a traffic light system (green, amber and red). This provides a practical way to categorise foods as healthy or less healthy.

As a minimum standard, no red items should be included in school lunches. Amber foods are ones that should not be part of the diet every day but may still have some nutritional value. Green foods contain lots of nutrients and can be eaten every day. Lunches should be made up of amber and green items. As suppliers change towards offering healthier menu options, the proportion of green ingredients each week should increase and the frequency of amber items each week should decrease.

The purpose of the Pathway to Nutrition transition plan is to support students to learn about and adapt to healthy food in schools where these foods are unfamiliar. This approach may not be needed in all schools. It is not compulsory to transition your menu if students are already enjoying a lunch that meets the nutritional guidelines.

Some suppliers have had success starting with a menu made up of 75 percent green ingredients and have found no need to change, while others have found using a pathway approach effective.

Case in point: The Food Company

This provided an opportunity to learn more about providing lunches in a school environment and how to engage the kids in lunches effectively.

The first obstacle to overcome was to introduce students to the idea of a healthy lunch. Items such as brown bread sandwiches were not commonly seen in lunch boxes. The Food Company initially provided high fibre white bread sandwiches with minimal fillings (eg meat, lettuce, cheese). Once kids were eating the sandwiches, they were able to make them more nutritious.

Within a month, one slice of white bread was replaced with wholemeal, and additional vegetables like cucumber and tomatoes were added. After around two months they were able to transition to full wholemeal sandwiches.

The Food Company now provides lunches to ten schools, catering to around 3,000 students per day. Lunches now look significantly different. The Food Company has found that kids in different schools start from different places on their healthy eating journey, and they need to adjust their menus and how long it takes to change accordingly. They regularly monitor food scraps to understand how changes to menus are received.

Further information and guidance for suppliers within the Ka Ora, Ka Ako | Healthy School Lunches programme can be found at www.education.govt.nz H

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION Updates

The Ministry of Education is currently in the process of updating its nutrition guidelines for Ka Ora, Ka Ako in collaboration with the Ministry of Health. These updates are expected to be completed by April and Restaurant & Cafe Educatering will be doing a special feature regarding the new nutritional guidelines.

CHRIS HIPKINS Minister of Education Part of this update will be looking at plant-based alternatives and whether these products fit within the non-processed or less-processed foods that are recommended under the current guidelines. The popularity of plantbased foods, particularly how they fit into a sustainability ethos, is on the rise and plantbased eating is trending in snacks for kids.

The Programme So Far

In August last year, and interim evaluation report of the Healthy School Lunches Programme was commissioned to help the Ministry of Education assess the early impact of the pilot programme based on the priority outcomes of food availability, consumption, hunger reduction, wellbeing, and attendance.

Evidence for the evaluation included learner food diaries over two one-week periods from 2,729 learners in 129 classes across 38 schools; lunch photos collected from a selection of classes in 128 schools; focus groups with school staff in nine schools and attendance data from 87 schools.

According to Education Minister Chris Hipkins, early evidence suggested young people are less hungry, eating healthier food and have better physical and mental wellbeing since the introduction of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako | Healthy School Lunches programme.

“These initial findings are very encouraging. The interim report shows that the school lunches programme is improving food security and mental wellbeing, especially for our most disadvantaged learners. It also improved diet and nutrition for all students in the programme,” Hipkins said.

Suppliers and Schools

Local capacity, capabilities and infrastructure were not always readily available to schools to quickly undertake a school lunch programme. Regional capacity to prepare and provide food every day varied, meaning that some schools could call upon

By the end of 2020, most Tranche 1-3 schools (76 percent) opted to use an external supplier(s) while a few schools (19 percent) chose to prepare their own lunches, hiring requisite staff to deliver the pilot. Very few schools chose a combination of both external and internal supplier models.

several organisations to prepare and deliver food to the required numbers of learners every day, while other schools lacked any feasible options.

To simplify the process for schools who chose to outsource food preparation and delivery, a panel of supplers were selected through an open tender process. Schools and kura were then able to select from this panel of suppliers that demonstrated they met the minimum standards of food hygiene, waste management, and food preparation.

The Benefits for Kiwi Kids

There is no doubt that a child who grows up without adequate nutrition will face significant barriers to academic achievement, in addition to the cognitive, emotional, mental, and physical consequences of food insecurity.

Food security is essential for children and young people to be happy and healthy, and learning and developing. Children living in food insecure households are less likely to consume nutritionally balanced diets essential for optimal growth and development, and this can have immediate and long-term negative consequences for their health and education.

Household food insecurity has been associated with a wide range of child health and development problems from infancy through to adolescence, including but not limited to: child obesity, poor academic performance, and developmental and behavioural problems.

The interim evaluation showed that the pilot programme often achieved more than what was expected in the initial 2 to 3 months,’ and benefits were ‘greater’ for the most disadvantaged learners, the evaluation report says. The pilot also showed ‘very good progress towards addressing hunger’, as well as ‘progress towards improving well-being’.

The report says the pilot showed: • large benefits’ for all primary and intermediate learners in respect of the types of food available and consumed • ‘large gains’ in fullness for learners who previously had insufficient food and reported feeling full after lunch because of the programme • ‘large gains’ in mental wellbeing by the most disadvantaged learners • a reduction in the proportion of learners with low health quality of life • improvements for learners, on average, in terms of their overall heath quality of life, as well as in their physical and emotional functioning.

“I agreed with the report that ‘more time’ is needed to measure the programme’s broader impacts across more schools before conclusions could be drawn on its longer-term effects,” noted Hipkins.

“Over time, we believe that New Zealand’s free and healthy school lunches programme will deliver education gains for many students, in addition to the nutritional, hunger reduction, and wellbeing gains that they are already experiencing according to the report.”

Planning for the evaluation of the expanded lunches programme is underway. This will seek to track the progress of larger numbers of the most disadvantaged learners, as well as the wider benefits of the programme, including to local economies. It will also seek to incorporate the voices of whānau, iwi, and the wider community. H