David Seymour trying one of the school lunches. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The minister in charge of changes to the school lunch programme says the fact pies will be served for lunch on Friday is partly a celebration to mark a milestone of 1 million lunches delivered.
Food provider Compass, part of the School Lunch Collective which has been contracted to deliver the meals, will be serving pies and Pita Pit to students while it gets on top of its food production.
In a statement sent to schools and RNZ, Compass said it had reached the end of its three-week menu. To tide over until then, pies will be served instead as a one-off. Fruit would be provided to students in Year 9 and above.
Associate Education Minister David Seymour said the pies would be a one-off, and not part of the long-term programme.
"First of all, it's partly a celebration of a million. It's been a huge thing to stand up 123,000 meals delivered hot every day to hundreds of schools, often in remote locations. Let's celebrate," he said.
"Second of all, this is in order to ensure that they will have enough production and they'll catch up a little bit, and next week it'll be back to business as usual."
In a statement, Compass acknowledged the pies did not meet the nutritional guidelines of the programme.
"But this enables us to get on top of our food production so that we can continue to improve on delivery and ensure students receive lunch every school day," it said.
Seymour was asked whether pies were healthy.
"There was once an old saying, that you should have everything in moderation, including moderation," he said.
"I don't think there'll be a lot of complaints from the children, I suspect. But it's also the fact that what we've done is really big and really ambitious and it's saving the government a huge amount of money."
Labour's education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said the minister's response was not good enough.
"I think it's absolutely patronising that they're being spun as a celebration and that these are teething issues. This is a disaster. He cannot deliver what he has promised to deliver, and he needs to front up and own up to that," she said.
Tinetti said she had no confidence that the pies would stay a one-off.
The revised programme will save taxpayers $130 million a year while maintaining nutritional standards.
The rollout of the new programme has had some teething issues, with some schools complaining of delays, meaning they have had to go out and buy their own lunches for students.
The Ministry of Education told RNZ it had fielded 259 queries and complaints in the first two weeks of the school year, from 141 of the 466 schools the School Lunch Collective covered.
The collective said it delivered meals on time to 97 percent of schools this week. It had hired more drivers, brought in more trucks, boosted production capacity to ensure sufficient meals were prepared well in advance, and added more staff to oversee special dietary needs.
Despite early complaints of the quality of the meals, Seymour said reception from schools and children had been positive, saying he had received feedback from some children saying the meals were better than last year's.
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