The cost of living is rarely out of the news, with recent stories highlighting its effects on everything from the housing market to pensioners’ quality of life.
However, the specific effects on schools and their students has not been widely spoken about. Recent figures from Stats NZ show that petrol prices are up 3.5 percent and electricity 2.6 percent in the three months to March, compounding already-high prices and putting families with children under additional pressure.
National charity KidsCan is calling for more awareness of the impacts on students, with case studies from schools across the motu highlighting how tough things are for many young people and the effects on their learning.
“What was incredibly tight before is now impossibly tight.”
For Nga Iwi School in Māngere, deputy principal Arun Ganda said that demand for basic support has surged in recent months, with the school now feeding double the number of children in its breakfast club.
“For a lot of our families, times are really tough. What was incredibly tight before is now impossibly tight.”
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Mr Ganda said the school was doing its best, but the problems whānau are facing were hard to overcome.
“We certainly have hungry kids, although we do our best to feed them.”
“We know a lot of our attendance issues come down to families being sick, living in mouldy homes, broken housing, or simply not being able to afford to stay in the community.”
“It’s not that families aren’t trying, because they are. There are just so many pressures they simply cannot fix.”
KidsCan supports schools like Nga Iwi with vital food, jackets and shoes, but Mr Ganda said even with breakfast programmes, food support, clothing, hygiene assistance and community outreach, it was impossible to comprehend the scale of the issue.
“Even the support we get doesn’t cover what they need.”
“Crushing” pressure on families
At Buller High School, recent local job losses and rising living costs have compounded the strain many families were already facing.
Sheree Hollis, Dean at Buller High School, said while the Buller community was strong and resilient, but could only take so much.
Ms Hollis said that the work the school and KidsCan were doing was the only lifeline some students had to reliable food access.
“There is absolutely nothing left afterwards.”
“We are busy every single day of the week. You can see the difference before payday and after payday.”
The school runs breakfast clubs and lunch programmes, which are now full every day, with nothing left over. Students are increasingly arriving hungry, and demand has never been higher.
Like Nga Iwi School, Buller High School also provides warm clothes, jackets, shoes and hygiene products to students in need, and Ms Hollis said she fears that the coming winter will only increase demand.
“The only word I have to describe the pressure some families are under is crushing.”
“Just send them to school, we will feed them”
Principal Stephanie Thompson said that rising fuel costs were affecting attendance at Beach Haven Primary School in Auckland’s Birkdale.
“I’ve had parents who live further away and would say we can’t come to school today. We can’t make it. But you know they don’t have petrol.”
“When you have a middle-income family and they are finding things tough, you know those whānau who were already at the other end are really struggling.”
Administrator Claire Byfield said that they urged parents to get their children through the door so that the school could feed them.
“Mondays and Tuesdays are busy.
“People are waiting for payday of some description. But we said just send them to school, we will feed them.
“They won’t have anything to eat at home, but they will here.”
Their breakfast club was currently using about five loaves of bread a day, but was only solving part of the problem.
“We are getting more kids coming to us at the end of the day to see if there are sandwiches that are still there to take home,” Ms Byfield said.
“They will ask if they can take some home for their sister. That has never ever happened before until this year.”
Ms Thompson said the situation was out of hand.
“Not having kai in your home shouldn’t be a reason not to come to school.
“We don’t want any child feeling whakama about not having anything to eat.”
Like Buller High School, Beach Haven was concerned about what the winter would bring.
“I’ve never seen it this bad.”
