Why this South Auckland principal says recent education policy changes could hurt Pacific students

There are fears changes to the education curriculum and cutting school lunches will have a greater negative impact on Pacific learners.

The coalition government is implementing a minimum of an hour of reading, writing and maths each day in a bid to improve New Zealand’s declining literacy and numeracy rates.

But Rowandale Principal Karl Vasau says they were already meeting the requirement, but the new focus is creating a narrowing of their curriculum.

“For many years, schools already had a good balance of these core subjects … but I’ve already seen that shift in cultural practice and understanding within my school.

“Reading and writing and mathematics are definitely core subjects and are essential, but the curriculum is full of other areas, ICT, arts, PE, health and wellbeing, Pacific languages, cultural dance, these things are important as well.”

He says some teachers are now questioning whether to forgo assembly or other events so the timeframe requirements are met.

Ministry of Education figures show Pacific learners’ progress in most subjects at primary level is similar or higher than that of non-Pacific learners.

Unfinished work

The Ministry of Education has paused twenty building projects in schools, along with a Ministerial Inquiry to look at the entire school property system. Vasau says these wait times affect children’s learning.

“When the Ministry decides to invest in these projects, it's an investment in our children. So any delay like this causes anxiety, causes stress and creates an environment where children are waiting.

“What they will find is that all of these upgrades and all of these new builds are essential, because it wouldn’t have been in place if they weren’t important.

“So having this just gives a bit more stress to the whole project and possibly creates a situation where children and staff, community, are waiting in what are possibly not adequate conditions.”

Food for thought

The government is reviewing the Ka Ora, Ka Oko programme, which costs $350 million each year to provide lunches to more than 220,000 students. The programme has been criticised for thousands of meals that are wasted each day, along with providing lunches for students who may not need it.

But Save the Children’s Advocacy Director Jacqui Southey says the government must shift their perception from cost cutting to investing in children.

"The lunch children receive should not be a source of shame or stigma. It would also be extremely challenging to ascertain which children are ‘poor enough’ to meet a targeted threshold.

"Cutting the programme or degenerating it to harmful child targeting should not be based on examples of a school that has high food waste.”

Pacific children are more likely to experience material hardship and food insecurity, with 40 per cent of households running out of food sometimes or often.

“Having these school lunches just creates one less worry for our families”, says Vasau.

“These lunches provided in schools not only creates a healthy environment or option for them, but behaviours where they’re sharing and they’re sitting down and they’re eating together.”

Vasau says the school will continue to feed hungry students even if the funding for free lunches is scrapped.

“We used to have a lunch programme where we’d source donations and we would also use some of our operations grant to create sandwiches for children who came to school … and we used to make almost 200 every day.

“So with these lunches in schools, it just meant that we were able to free up that money to provide other things for our kids.”

Meanwhile, Labour’s education spokesperson Jan Tinette is campaigning for the free lunches to be continued.

“This is a programme that feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money. It is exactly the kind of programme that should continue to be funded, especially during a cost of living crisis.”

Watch the full interview on Pacific Mornings with Rowandale Principal Karl Vasau: