Loss of Libelle leads to drop in quality, schools to close canteens with short notice

Dozens of schools are losing their canteens - some with just 24 hours notice - as the fallout from a school lunch makers liquidation spreads.

Libelle, which provides about 125,000 meals a day for the government's revamped school lunch programme, went bust on Tuesday.

Liquidators and the main contractor Compass have stepped into make sure lunches are still being delivered - including flying in heat-and-eat-meals from Australia.

The liquidator Deloitte initially said it was looking at ways to continue the Libelle Group's other operations around RSE workers, canteens and boarding houses.

More than 60 schools with Libelle-run canteens have been told they will cease trading - some at close of business on Friday.

One school is planning to run sausage sizzles next week to plug the gap, while others are scrambling to find another supplier.

On Thursday, a Huntly school announced it would temporarily suspend the school lunch programme, blaming the poor quality of the meal. The Ministry of Education had asked Kimihia School if it had consulted its board and community in making the decision.

It said the school has reached out to their community to determine how many meals are required for their students, and while not all parents have responded, based on the immediate feedback from parents the School Lunch Collective will deliver 150 meals to the school on Monday.

Seymour needs to bow out - NZEI president

Meanwhile, a survey by the education union has found 80 percent of the respondents were not satisfied with meals provided by the School Lunch Collective.

The New Zealand Educational Institute surveyed more than 200 principals and area school Kaiako. Of those supplied by the Compass lead collective, just 7.5 percent were satisfied.

The survey was carried out before the main lunch maker for the collective Libelle went bust on Tuesday.

NZEI President Ripeka Lessels told Checkpoint schools have been telling her how dissatisfied they are with the current School Lunch Collective.

"The food is unappetising; it does not look like it has any nutritional value. It's taken extra staff out of the front line to deliver the food, to do work with cooking the food."

She said schools have had to pay for the extra time involved with the meals.

"They've had to find the relief, they've had to get teacher aides and staff and to do that, they have to fund that."

On Friday, she said she was sent photos and information of a school in the South Island that was delivered 660 frozen lunches at 9am.

"They had to have them heated for the first tranche of children at 10am. It was just disaster to disaster."

Schools want to revert back to the old school lunch programme, she said.

"Local providers, in-house school providers, iwi and hapu providers that worked, that's what they want to go back to."

"This is about the future of our children."

She said with the current school lunch programme, there are costs in the large amounts of waste and meals being flown in from Australia.

In response to the announcements of school canteens closing, she said it was a travesty.

"These are school canteens. These are the bits of the system that our children do depend on. Kids need to be fed to learn. ... the programmes need to be effective for our children."

Lessels said David Seymour needs to hand the reins of the school lunch programme back to Education Minister Erica Stanford.

"He needs to admit that it has failed and hand it back to Minister Stanford."

'They were rock hard' - Complaints continue

Schools that get the lunches from Compass say quality has dropped to a new low.

On Friday, Checkpoint found out the meal appeared to be two cheese and tomato scrolls that were frozen solid.

The principal of Kaitao Intermediate in Rotorua, Phil Palfrey, said he was shocked when the lunch was brought into his office.

"My office lady couldn't believe it, she got the two of these buns out and she said that they're just rock hard. I thought, I'm sure that's not true, but unfortunately, they were rock hard."

He said the scrolls were so hard he was only able to bite the edge, but not through the middle.

A child at the school said the scrolls tasted nice but were difficult to eat.

"It was cold, it was hard. It was saucy."

Since Libelle had gone into liquidation, Palfrey said the quality of meals had gotten worse.

"The other one that apparently came from Australia, that was just four slices of lasagna, this horrible, tiny bit of tomato sauce and a bit of paste in it. It was very unappetising."

The principal of Massey Primary School in West Auckland, Bruce Barnes, said students received two cold scrolls for lunch.

"Each student received two, about what looked like a hot cross bun size. There's a bigger one and a smaller one. They have a cheese topping, and I saw red stuff on the inside, but they came frozen and they're very, very cold, stone cold."

He thought the scrolls would have at least been thawed out since the school had no facilities to heat them up.

"On a scale of one to ten they'd be a five I suppose because they would eventually be edible, but I don't think that they're very appetising at all."

Tuck shops close

The principal of Auckland's Macleans College, Steve Hargreaves, said the school had received an email saying it would be the last day their tuck shop would be operating on Friday morning.

"The tuck shop have confirmed that today they'll be done, and we need to find an alternative for the students who want to buy lunch."

Hargreaves said the announcement was given at little notice and took staff by surprise.

"I feel sorry for the staff because they told us earlier in the week that they thought it would carry on and they were told business as usual for the moment and the organisation was hopeful of finding a buyer that would take over."

"Clearly that hasn't happened, so now we need something in place for Monday."

Macleans College has nearly 3000 students and hundreds of students use the canteen during morning tea and lunch breaks, Hargreaves said.

"Although that's a relatively small percentage of the school, it's still quite a big number of students."

Hargreaves said some houses nearby have been trialling an initiative called Dollar for Schools who deliver meals to the school from a limited menu.

"We're probably going to try and rush that into place for Monday, just so that students who turn up without lunch will have something to order first thing in the morning if they haven't ordered over the weekend."

The principal of Raglan Area School, Louisa Barham, said her school's canteen will also be closing from Friday.

"We got a letter yesterday informing us that our canteen would be stopping today, due to the liquidation process of the company that runs our canteen."

"We're going to be without provision for the next whatever period of time it takes for us to figure this out."

She said the school's canteen is used every day by students and is a large part of the school's operation.

"Our socio-economic status is such that we do not qualify for the school lunches programme."

As the President of the New Zealand Area Schools Association, she said she has heard that Libelle's liquidation will have a big impact on the school lunches programme currently being delivered.

"The whole quality of that programme has been put at risk due to the reduced funding that has been put into the provision of this school lunches programme across the country."

In a response from questions from Checkpoint, the Ministry of Education has confirmed that it has refunded 39 schools a total of $40,000.

This is after they had to fork out for meals, when their school lunches did not arrive or were inedible.

It will also refund another $9200 to five schools when it receives invoices.

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