Who benefits from the ECE Food Programme.
NEWS/ANALYSIS.
Part 2 of our series on the ECE Food Programme.
June 24, 2025.
After Associate Education Minister David Seymour in May 2024 announced the expansion of the free lunch programme to early childhood education (ECE) services, he repeatedly said only “low-equity, community-based” (not-for-profit) centres would be eligible.
However, analysis by the Office of Early Childhood Education (OECE) has found that 21% of centres that have signed up are privately owned (for-profit) – and because many of the private centres are larger than most community-based ones, 33% of children participating in the programme attend privately owned centres.
For services that came on board during the programme’s first “wave” on March 31, 2025, 42% were privately owned.
They included a handful of centres that are part of large corporate chains (made up of 6 or more centres).
Some of the participating ECEs already provided food as part of their fees to whānau before the programme started. While the Ministry of Education has told these centres that they can’t charge parents for the food KidsCan provides, the centres are not required to reduce their fees, even though the centres are no longer paying for food.
“Receiving food through this programme may free up resources for other priorities of the ECE service, such as learning resources, clothing, or lowering fees,” the Ministry said in a document answering frequently asked questions on the programme.
Seymour confirmed the requirement for services to be community-based in order to qualify for the scheme in a media release on October 22, 2024.
However, in another media statement, published just two days later, Seymour did not mention the need for services to be not-for-profit.
The Ministry’s website also makes no mention of the need for eligible services to be community-based. However, it does state that services must have a low equity score, have adequate kitchen facilities to prepare the meals, and be open all day, to be eligible.
It’s not clear when and why the requirement for services to be community-based was (quietly) removed. The change was never formally announced, despite the fanfare surrounding the healthy lunch programme generally.
In the OECE’s view, the lack of transparency by the Ministry surrounding the scrapping of criteria for ECE services to be community-based to participate in the free lunch programme is unacceptable.
The OECE’s chief advisor, Dr Sarah Alexander, said: “It’s duplicitous to tell the public one thing at Budget time and reiterate in the months after, only to omit to say when launching the programme that a key condition was changed”.
“Taking money from the free lunches in schools programme was made a little bit more palatable to the public because it was going to help feed children in low-equity community-based ECEs. But that has turned out not to be entirely true.”
The OECE requested an interview with Seymour about the ECE lunches programme. His press secretary said the Minister was not available, so the OECE sent detailed written questions about why and when the requirement for centres to be community-based changed. Seymour’s office did not respond.
The numbers
Seymour has said up to 10,000 children will be fed over two years through the ECE free lunch programme.
The programme is being rolled out in “waves”.
As at June 22, the Ministry estimated that 6,405 tamariki had benefitted from the programme.
It had been launched at 230 ECE services.
Internal Ministry documents said that kōhanga reo would make up about 60% of the services eligible for free food. Kōhanga reo were part of the “second wave” of centres, which came onboard on May 12.
The Ministry’s hautū (leader) of operations and integration, Sean Teddy, said: “The timing for inviting kōhanga reo into the programme was subject to Te Kōhanga National Trust availability. The start of 2025 was a busy time with the 2025 kapa haka festivals and the passing of Dame Iritana Te Rangi Tāwhiwhirangi, founder of the Te Kōhanga Reo movement.”
The next group of 77 ECE services and kōhanga reo that were part of the programme were expected to start receiving kai deliveries from June 23.
About 1800 tamariki were expected to be part of this third wave, bringing the total number of preschool children receiving free lunches to 8205.
The Ministry was yet to release the names of the centres participating in the third wave of the programme.
The Ministry also said in documents obtained by the OECE that ECEs with the highest level of need (based on the EQI) would be brought into the programme first.
What does low equity mean?
The Ministry has used the new ECE Equity Index (EQI) to assess which ECE services are eligible for free lunches.
A range of data points that relate to the socio-economic status of individual tamariki, obtained from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), the Ministry of Social Development and Te Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust, are fed into the index.
This information is used to assign the service with a number (from 1 to 5) which determines their equity score. EQI 1 means the children at the service have the highest level of need.
The Ministry says the new EQI was designed to better target resources because it includes a wider range of socio-economic indicators in its calculations, and uses more up-to-date information than the current EQI, which uses information from the 2006 Census.
The Ministry decided to use the new ECE EQI to make choices about the food programme because it says it is the most accurate measure the Ministry has to identify needs based on tamariki’s socio-economic backgrounds.
