Govt can stop students going to exams hungry – PPTA

Govt can stop students going to exams hungry – PPTA

This week there will be students going in to their NCEA exams hungry, something the government has the opportunity to fix.

On Wednesday the Feed the Kids Bill will have its first reading, and PPTA urges all parties to support it to go to Select Committee. 

PPTA president Angela Roberts said the association wanted each young person to achieve their potential, but poor nutrition undermines this.

Students from the government’s “priority groups”, Maori, Pasifika and low-socio-economic status are the ones who are most likely to come to school without having had breakfast, she said.

“It is no coincidence that the groups who have the worst nutrition also have poorer academic outcomes.”

“Food programmes can be part of providing equitable access to education, they allow schools to overcome the barriers that some students face to learning,” she said.

PPTA welcomed the announcement of the expansion of the Kick Start breakfast programme earlier this year, but believed giving school food programmes a legislative basis would make them more likely to be sustained.

“If schools were resourced to provide things like the food program in this bill, they would be able to do so much more for the 270,000 New Zealand young people who live in poverty,” she said.

“The educational challenge for New Zealand is addressing the achievement of our priority groups. This sort of targeted measure would do a lot towards that.”

ENDS

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