Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

Although the school holidays are still in full swing, that doesn’t mean that the country’s children are getting the food they need at home. New Zealand children are still going hungry at school and that means that they’re ending up years behind other children in key subjects. The data that shows this ongoing issue for us all and also ranks New Zealand poorly for food poverty. The health researchers behind the just-published analysis argue the government needs to double the number of children served by its newly revamped lunches in schools scheme. It’s no surprise that hungry students struggle to learn: food poverty has been cited as a big barrier in New Zealand’s scoring under the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. A comparison between that and two other global datasets has allowed a team of researchers to look at the link in greater depth. After analysing food insecurity levels with subject-specific scores, the team revealed a stark trend. Any degree of food insecurity was associated with