Fruit in Schools

Case study from the Ministry of Health

The fruits of their labour

Kahurina, Te Amorangi, Te Miringa and Mitchell are fruit monitors at Kaikohe West Primary School in Northland. Being a fruit monitor brings responsibilities, and the children take theirs very seriously. Each morning they sort fruit into buckets before distributing it to their allocated classrooms. This has to be done before school starts. This morning they are sorting bananas. Yesterday it was apples. Tomorrow Kahurina is hoping for nashi.

“It’s my favourite fruit,” says the chatty nine-year-old.

A teacher aid hovers, letting the kids find their own system, but helping out here and there, sorting bananas into bunches based on size.

“The littlies get the smaller ones, the big ones are for the older children,“ says Kahurina, who proudly wears her special fruit monitor badge pinned to her pink and white ribbed jersey.

In the common room, teachers and teacher aids drink mugs of tea and coffee, gathering themselves for a busy, noisy day ahead. Teacher aid Rose Cookson, who has two children at Kaikohe West, blows on a cup of tea as she talks about Fruit in Schools, a new initiative to give children in regions of high social and health needs a jump start to healthy eating.

“Of course we give our children fruit at home. That’s not really the point. The point is when the kids see their friends eating fresh fruit, nicely presented and chopped up into bite sized portions, and when teachers integrate fruit-eating into the curriculum, they’re much more likely to eat it rather than throw away a bruised apple that’s been rattling around in their bag all day.”

The common room clears as the school day begins and the place falls quiet, except for the muted sounds of children talking in the classrooms, and call of a resident tui enjoying the morning sun.

At 10.25 a bell rings and there’s an explosion of noise. Children rush out of the classroom clutching bananas, laughing and chatting with their friends and finding it hard to pay attention to the teacher who tells them to sit while they eat their fruit. The kids are full of beans and just want to have their morning tea and get out to play on a bright summer’s day.

Why fruit?

It is widely known that fruit and vegetables offer a protective effect against some common cancers and heart disease, but research indicates New Zealand children generally have a low level of fruit and vegetable consumption. The 2002 Child Nutrition Survey showed only about two out of five children ate the recommended number of fruit servings (at least two) a day, while around three out of five children ate the recommended number of vegetable servings (three or more) a day.

Last year the Government announced its Cancer Control Action Plan– a $40 million initiative to fight cancer. Of this about $8.6 million of new funding was earmarked for primary prevention programmes. Within this action plan comes the Cancer Control Strategy, which amongst other things identifies four areas of primary health promotion to focus on - activity, nutrition, sun protection and smoking cessation. Primary prevention addresses cause rather than effect. FIS was one of the programmes to get funding from the action plan.

FIS has two roles. The first commits schools taking part in the programme to adopting a whole school approach. This is where parents, students, teachers, Boards of Trustees and school staff collectively work together to create an environment that supports the four key priority areas of the Cancer Control Strategy.

The second is a targeted component for children attending high-need primary schools who receive a free piece of fruit each day for up to three years.

Often the schools taking part in FIS are also Health Promoting Schools.

Schools play an important role in health promotion, says Russell Holmes, national project manager for FIS.

“They can be agents of change especially when they work with their communities. FIS is about strengthening the relationship between the schools and their communities by encouraging them to work together to change behaviour and start making an impact on our obesity and cancer rates.”

A former Health Promoting Schools co-ordinator, he explains the concept.

“The HPS approach was originally developed by the World Health Organization. A HPS emphasises the role the community plays in helping schools promote and support physical, emotional and social wellbeing at school.”

A HPS can choose and instigate policies and activities such as improving school lunches, parenting skills classes, safe school policies, after-school care programmes, mental health programmes and a range of other activities in partnership with the community.

Holmes says it is crucial for the success of the FIS that schools adopt the HPS approach.

“You have to walk the talk. You can’t just teach health and wellbeing. This could mean offering healthy food for school lunches, helping parents set up walking taxi programmes, not just making sure kids have got their hats on at lunchtime but offering sun block for them and teachers as well. A HPS school would come to these decisions democratically and with the support of the community.”

Kaikohe West principal Barbara Wards backs this up.

“We’ve been a HPS since the programme started around 1997. As part of our HPS programme the children set up a children’s council. They decided they didn’t like the taste of the water so our school caretaker developed and patented a water filter that we’ve also sold to other schools. The children were coming up with suggestions for improvement. “

Ward says FIS underlines the health promotion work they had already been doing.

The daily fare

Back in the classroom, the children at Moerewa School, east of Kaikohe, are drinking nashi juice with their morning apple. Their teacher brought in his juicer for yesterday’s spares. Six-year-old Raiha, in a pale blue sweatshirt and with startling green eyes, screws up her nose at first.
“Go on, try it,” her teacher gently persists. Raiha takes a gulp and decides it is quite delicious and goes very well with her apple.

Moerewa, like Kaikohe West, is labelled a decile one school. This means it is situated in an area with high social and health needs. There are a range of factors that come into play but criteria is based on factors such as access to health and social services, transport and communications and average household incomes.

According to the 2001 census, tamariki-Mâori children from birth to 14, make up 47 percent of all children in the Northland region. Thirty five percent of tamariki are aged five to nine years. A third of tamariki live in crowded households where the number people living in the house exceeds its ability to provide proper shelter and services. The median average income for households in Northland with tamariki is almost $7000 lower than the national average for all households with tamariki.
The parents of the children who attend Moerewa tend to be seasonal workers and beneficiaries. The school population of 230 is 97 percent Mâori.

But labels can be misleading. When you visit Moerewa School you see the parent helpers seem no less committed to their children’s education, the children no less interested in learning, the teachers no less enthusiastic.

Principal Keri Milne-Ihimaera, who moved from urban Auckland to teach in rural Northland schools, says the sense of community is strong in Moerewa.

“That’s why we came from the position that we are working with the community - that what we are doing complements the work parents already do. The issue blurs the lines between what is the school’s role and what is the parent’s role so we have worked hard to make sure this was a collective and inclusive decision and process, not something the Ministry of Health down in Wellington imposed on us.”

There’s a knock on Milne-Ihimaera’s door. A student enters and reminds the principal the class is running out of time. The interview is interrupted. The principal has to rush home to get her frying pan for a school cooking class. She promised.