New Zealand children are sometimes provided breakfast at school through charity and business programmes. However, there is no lunch programme currently in schools.
In his documentary, "Inside Child Poverty", Bryan Bruce visits Sweden and finds that every child there - no matter what level of parental income - is provided with a cooked, nutritious meal at lunch each school day. One of the claims in the documentary is that countries such as Sweden are better at providing for all children, rather than judging how deserving a child is based on whether or not their parents are working.
bryanbruce.co.nz/feature/child-poverty/inside-child-poverty-full-documentary Some say that providing lunches should be a parent's job and not be the responsibility of the government, and that a lunch programme would be far too costly to fund.
However, others say that filling and nutritious lunches are essential for helping children to focus and learn, and that funds could be gathered by redistributing existing welfare money.
It is proposed that a cooked school lunch be provided for every child in a New Zealand school.