Tasmania’s free school lunches program to expand to 15 more schools next year

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tasmania's free school lunches program is set to expand to a further 15 schools next year. The program already provides students in 45 public schools with a healthy meal at least once a week. It's caught the attention of health researchers, who are looking into the effect of school lunches on students' wellbeing.

Transcript

00:00These kids get a healthy lunch every day. On today's menu, pasta.

00:07It's like having tea with your friends and lunch all together. So fun.

00:14Way better than ham and tea sandwiches. I do not want to have them again.

00:18The Free School Food Lunches program is the biggest of its kind in Australia,

00:22running in 45 public schools across the state.

00:26Next year, another 15 schools will join.

00:29Currently doing 14,000 meals a week in 2026.

00:33We'll be in 60 schools statewide and doing around 20,000 meals a week, which is amazing.

00:39The Menzies Institute for Medical Research is looking at how to improve the program

00:44and its effect on school attendance, socialising and focus.

00:48General wellbeing, student engagement sort of in the classroom as well

00:54and also just understanding at the school level how the implementation is happening.

01:00What are your favourite school options?

01:03Researchers say it's a unique opportunity to collect data that has global interest.

01:07So actually there's a lot of interest nationally and internationally on the data that we're

01:12collecting around the impacts of these programs because in other places they've just sort of been rolled out

01:18without that evidence base being built into it.

01:21The research will include surveys and interviews with parents, students and organisers of the program

01:26with findings expected to be released by the end of next year.

01:29School Food Matters hopes the findings will support anecdotal evidence that the program improves student wellbeing.

01:35We know that, we hear it from schools all the time, but for us to actually show and clearly illustrate

01:42to government, to schools that this is a way we can improve.

01:47Research aiming to help more little learners do their best.

01:50School lunch is the best!

01:51School lunch is the best!

01:52School lunch is the best!

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