04/10/99 - Empty tummies dictate timing of school days

                 By Catherine Masters 

                 Some schools in South Auckland are rearranging teaching schedules around
                 hunger pangs. 

                 Cases of children turning up for class with empty bellies and no lunch are
                 becoming worryingly common, say teachers, health and community workers. 

                 While some schools are extending feeding programmes - more than 3000 meals
                 are now given to 650 children in 25 Manukau schools every week - others are
                 attempting to cope by teaching the important subjects in the morning. 

                 At Southern Cross Campus (three amalgamated schools) in Mangere, "brain"
                 topics such as maths and reading are taught in the morning, before the children
                 flag from lack of energy. 

                 Says Karen Mose, the director of the middle school (aged 10 to 14): "That's a
                 design I choose to do because I know that later in the day the level of
                 concentration is running down. Hunger definitely is a big problem for us." 

                 Teuila Percival, a Samoan paediatrician at Middlemore Hospital, said parents
                 often got the blame for not feeding their children - but parents were often
                 under-nourished and sick themselves. 

                 The Salvation Army says too much money is going on rent for state housing.
                 Most people using its Manukau budget service spent over 50 per cent of their
                 income on rent. 

                 Spokesman Ross Richards said many families simply could not afford food.
                 Once payments for rent, power and other bills were taken out, most had
                 significantly less money for food left over than that recommended by an Otago
                 University Department of Human Nutrition study. 

                 Already this year record numbers of food parcels are being given out - 570 a
                 month compared with last year's average of 450 a month. 

                 Shirley Maihi, principal of Finlayson Park School in Manurewa and a
                 spokeswoman for the area's primary schools, said hunger had become markedly
                 worse since the Government's last round of raising state rentals to market rates. 

                 This term, which begins today, the school extends its lunch programme for the
                 worst-off children to include breakfast. 

                 Mrs Maihi said it could not feed everyone, and many children received food only
                 intermittently, depending on how long their family's money lasted. 

                 Home visits had revealed cases of parents keeping children home from school
                 because they were embarrassed they had no food, she said. 

                 "And in some cases they were just keeping them in bed ... so their bodies
                 wouldn't feel the hunger." 

                 Heather Smith, who runs the Manukau - The Healthy City food project for
                 schools, said money to buy food was a constant worry. 

                 © Copyright 1999, NZ Herald