Government unveils rebooted school lunch menu

The government has unveiled its school lunches reboot, rolling out a new menu it says will save more than $130 million a year.

The revamped programme includes butter chicken curry, chicken katsu, lasagne, chicken pasta salad and wraps at a cost of $3 each.

The coalition announced plans to scale back the cost of the Ka ora, Ka ako free school lunch programme in intermediate and high schools in early May.

Today, Associate Education Minister David Seymour took reporters through a 'show and tell' of the revamped programme at Parliament.

He said the reboot saved more money than expected and had set a new standard for government working with businesses to achieve the best outcomes.

"We have embraced commercial expertise, used government buying power, and generated supply chain efficiencies to realise over $130m of annual cost savings, even more than anticipated in Budget 2024."

Seymour said if Labour had run the school lunches programme like he was the party could have saved more than $800 million over the past five years.

"Some suppliers in the existing programme will be affected and I appreciate this will be tough. However, the emphasis of the programme is to ensure students get good meals at an affordable cost to the taxpayer."

All students in Years 0 to 8 would receive the same sized meals (240 grams) and older students would receive larger lunches (at least 300g), which will include additional items such as fruit, yoghurt or muesli bars.

Schools who receive their lunches through the external model would continue to receive a variety of hot and cold meal delivered daily.

Schools using the internal and iwi/hapū model would have access to a range of government-negotiated wholesale ingredients and could continue to prepare meals internally.

These schools will would receive a slight increase ($4 per meal) in per student funding to continue to employ people to prepare the meals.

Seymour said he expected the programme would evolve over time but he, the School Lunch Collective, the Expert Advisory Group and the Ministry of Education were focused on a smooth transition for schools on day one of Term 1 2025.

"I have met with our commercial partners, and they are committed to making this work for the children and the schools. I would like to thank the members of the Expert Advisory Group, the Ministry of Education, affected schools and suppliers for working together so hard, and effectively, to provide a fantastic solution for the kids."