In Australia, schools do not routinely provide lunch; thus, Australian adolescents mainly bring food from home to eat during the school food breaks (1). Hence, home-packed foods (home-prepared and/ or packed lunches and snacks) are an avenue to improve adolescents’ healthy eating at school. As food gatekeepers, parents can influence adolescents’ eating habits at school by helping prepare and pack their lunchboxes (2). Thus, this study aimed to explore parents' perceptions regarding the home-packed foods that adolescents take to school. A nationwide cross-sectional online survey was administered via Qualtrics between 2024 and 2025 to parents of secondary school students. The survey consisted of five sections; 1) home-packed food provision practices, 2) perceptions regarding the school food environment, 3) parent-child food communication, 4) parents’ role regarding adolescents’ school food behaviours, and 5) their suggestions to support adolescents’ healthy eating at school. The present abstract focuses on home-packed food provision practices (section 1). Data were analysed using SPSS software by performing statistical tests: Chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney. In total, 405 respondents completed the survey. The majority stated that their child (i.e., adolescent) takes home-packed lunches (74%) and snacks (83%) to school every day. More than half of respondents reported that their child takes fruits (69%) and grain foods (55%) to school every day. Around two-fifths of respondents reported their child taking vegetables to school every day, while milk, milk-based products and non-dairy foods, meat/ fish/ eggs and legumes were less commonly taken to school every day. About one third of parents reported that sweet cookies/ biscuits/ cakes/ sweet pastries/doughnuts (38%), crackers/ crisps (35%) and muesli/ cereal bars (31%) were taken every day or 3-4 times per week. Adolescents attending non-government schools had a significantly higher core food score (a proxy of frequency of packing/ preparing a core food) than those from government schools (p ≤ 0.001). Most respondents (73%) strongly agreed/ agreed that the food that their child takes to school is mostly healthy, and the majority (72%) were very satisfied/ satisfied with the food their child takes to school. Nearly half of respondents (40%) reported that the decision of which food to pack to school is mostly a parent-adolescent combined decision. In food decision-making, child’s taste preference (65%) and availability of food at home (60%) were reported as the most influential factors. Findings indicate that the nutritional quality of Australian secondary school students’ home-packed foods is suboptimal (frequently lacking core foods and regularly including discretionary foods), despite most respondents reporting it is healthy. This indicates the need for significant improvement in the nutritional quality of home-packed foods, which could be achieved by designing and implementing initiatives such as providing healthy lunchbox recipes, lunchbox demonstrations and healthy lunchbox assembling activities/games.