The school has partnered with the KickStart Breakfast Programme, a nationwide joint initiative between Fonterra, Sanitarium and the Ministry of Social Development. The programme has been running since the start of the school year.
The objective is to provide food for students who, for whatever reason, don't manage to eat breakfast before they go to school, to enable them to focus better on learning and achieve to the best of their abilities.
Every weekday the service is provided from 8.30am to 8.45am, offering Weet-Bix and milk, toast with various spreads, and even muesli bars on some days.
As part of their assessments, students in a year 11 foundation class need to perform community projects. This term they have been making the muesli bars out of the Weet-Bix.
Year 13 student Ella Rickard is the senior student organising the breakfast. Students throughout the school put their name down to volunteer in the morning; two prepare and serve the food each day.
Ella said there had not been a lot of students taking up the offer of a free breakfast in term 1. So, from the start of this term, hot chocolates and some other new breakfast items were added, ‘‘which have proven to be a hit and we now have a steady flow of students coming for breakfast’’.
The school plans to run the initiative until the end of the year.
It comes after budget changes to the national Ka ora, Ka ako free school lunch programme were announced in early May, with savings of $107 million made by changing the food provided in intermediate and high schools, to one major provider offering items such as sandwiches, fruit, and heat and eat items.
The full programme - which allowed schools to offer a variety of meals through their choice of internal and external suppliers - cost $323 million for one year. This will still be offered for primary schools.
By John Peneycad
