A few weeks into Term 1, it’s my pleasure to wish all teachers, staff, and tamariki the best for the 2025 school year. The start of the school year is filled with excitement and potential, and I’m sure many – including many exhausted parents – are fizzing at the idea of gaggles of kids excitedly careening through the school gates, catching up with old mates and sharing holiday memories.
Unfortunately, National has chosen to make life harder for many families, and it’s those same vibrant young people, parents, teachers and staff who are paying the price for the Government’s deep education cuts.
Hungry kids of all ages who were getting Labour’s filling and healthy school lunches will be greeted at the new year lunch bell with a snack, as National decided last year it would reduce funding and mass produce the meals through Compass instead. That’s despite the evidence telling them not to, that it would affect kids’ learning, attendance and wellbeing at school.
National’s school lunch stinginess is biting just as a major new analysis has found hungry kids end up years behind their peers in key subjects including maths and reading. By age 15, hungry kids have fallen 2-4 years behind – an outcome so bad even the researchers were shocked. And unfortunately, we have almost double the number of hungry students than comparable OECD countries.
As study author Professor Boyd Swinburn puts it: “Clearly, if governments are serious about improving educational outcomes, they should be dealing with this barn-door problem of hunger at school.” But National made cuts to the lunch programme anyway, removing local community jobs in the process.
At the same time, a review into school buses means routes around the country are being cancelled or altered, leaving families with no alternatives to get their kids to school. For working parents in rural areas these buses are essential. In areas like West Coast and Hawke’s Bay, parents are now facing hours out of their day to get their young people to and from school – or even longer if they have children in both primary and high school. This just isn’t possible for some families, particularly during busy times on the farm. Labour blocked this review from happening when we were in Government because we knew how it would affect rural communities. But National appears only too happy to save a few pennies at Kiwi parents’ expense.
National also pulled $2 billion from school building and maintenance projects, yet they somehow still found $2.9 billion for tax breaks for landlords. It shows just how wrong their priorities are.
The Government should be doing everything it can to increase attendance and lower costs for caregivers, instead of cutting classrooms, school bus routes and school lunches. Labour started the school lunches programme in 2020 because we care about kids’ learning and don’t want generations going hungry at school. We added more than 2,200 classrooms and upgraded every school in the country, so we could stop children learning in damp mouldy classrooms that were making them sick, or causing overcrowding into hallways and gyms.
As young people go back to school, we want them to make the most of their time there. Learning, playing and growing into people that will live fulfilling lives and contribute to our society. We should be proud of our education system, and we can do so much better. -by Jan Tinetti, Labour Education Spokesperson
