Dozens of schools in need of basics as term 1 begins
Monday, 2 February 2026
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As term 1 begins, 58 schools remain on a waiting list to receive desperately needed support from a charity to feed and adequately clothe their students.
KidsCan already supports 949 schools and if, or when, they manage to get the current schools off the waiting list, that number will exceed 1000 – almost half the public schools in Aotearoa.
Julie Chapman, chief executive of KidsCan, said when she co-founded the organisation almost 21 years ago, the food need in a school was about 10% of the role in low socio-economic areas.
That had shifted to include a greater catchment of schools and increased to 20% to 25% of a school roll – sometimes higher.
A survey of the schools on the waiting list found 52 of the respondents had children arriving at school without enough food to get through the day.
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“The level of food insecurity has certainly increased,” Chapman said.
“We're talking hundreds of tonnes of food that are sent out each term by us to make sure that kids have what they need just to get through the school day.”
At Cannington School, currently on the waiting list, support from organisations like KidsCan was about levelling their students – a roll of just 19.
Although it was classified as a high equity index school, the wealth within the the small rural school about a 30-minute drive from Timaru, varied significantly, principal Deane Power said.
It had a school uniform but support from KidsCan would help provide enough warm jerseys and jackets for the icy winter months for every child.
In previous years, he had students who would come to school in the same uniform for a week.
It was already part of the Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches Programme and also received milk and Weet-Bix from Kickstart Breakfast which students could tuck into if they needed.
As a rural school, it received funding to provide its own lunches – some of which came out of the school’s budget.
“Everyone loves the lunches at school that we have,” he said.
Support from KidsCan would also help save money when the school spent a lot on fruit.
Corinna School in Porirua, had been on the waiting list for about a year before it was able to start receiving support last year.
Its community was “very rich in so many ways but yet the financial and economic struggles are very real for people”, principal Trish Nash said.
By being able to offer support, she believed it helped build a sense of community and enabled more people to ask for help when they needed it.
One of the first questions teachers asked if a child came to school not ready to learn was if they had had breakfast.
“We've done a lot of work around emotional regulation and food is very important for that,” Nash said.
“They need to be well regulated to learn, as well as having food in their tummies.”
Issues in education were often treated in a silo when economic and social challenges directly impacted what happened in schools.
Rental prices in particular was a big challenge for whānau in the area, with quality of housing that was not up to standard, along with grocery bills which continued to climb – 4% in the year to December, while a loaf of white bread went up by nearly 60%.
But the school helped in every way it could, with Nash spending a lot of her time seeking funding for support.
“Our belief is that our kids deserve the best and that there are inequities in the system that we can help change, and if we can do that through KidsCan, then that’s why we ask for their support.”
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