Why School Feeding Matters?
Shady Salama, EFB Growth Lab
School Feeding Program Overview
Globally, millions of children attend school on an empty stomach. Going to school feeling hungry affects students’ ability to concentrate and learn. In countries affected by conflicts, children are as twice as likely to be out of school compared to their peers in stable countries. The dropout rates are 2.5 times more likely amongst girls.[1] School aged children who come from areas with poor quality diets, are more likely to suffer from short-term hunger. Hungry children attending schools tend to have a greater likelihood of becoming distracted, have diminished attentiveness and lack of interest in learning, which in return results in failure, and low achievement.[2]
Therefore, hunger constitutes a learning barrier for education especially for primary children at school. Hence, school feeding programs (SFPs) across the globe have succeeded in attracting children to attend school by offering them nourishing meals/snacks. The primary objective of SFP is to provide meals or snacks to alleviate short-term hunger, in order to enable children to learn. In many countries, school feeding is a recognized strategy to improve nutrition and health, reduce education inequalities, increase access to education and school attendance and improve students’ performance[3]. The importance in school feeding programs lie in the fact that the biological, psychological and social development of children (5 to 19 years old) is directly linked to intake of adequate and healthy nutrition.[4] In other words, for countries to ensure that children lead healthy an active life, they must eat healthy meals. Due to this fact, countries use school feeding program as a social protection measure for poor and vulnerable communities to mainly improve education rates. [5]
Across Africa, one in two school children, or over 65 million children received a nutritious meal in school every day in 2019, a massive increase from 38.4 million in 2013.[6]Egypt currently has the largest SFP on the continent with 12.5 million[7] school-aged children benefiting from the program, followed by Nigeria (10 million)[8], and South Africa (9 million)[9]. To further improve the food systems generally and school feeding programs specifically, governments, universities, civil society, relevant UN agencies, and development partners to create “School Meals Coalition”. The Coalition’s main aim was to restore school meals to more than 370 million school-aged children affected by the COVID-19 pandemic school meals dismissal? It is worthy to note that the School Meals Coalition sees SFP as an entry point to transform food systems, while improving public health, nutrition, and education outcomes. [10]
Types of School Feeding
School feeding program usually come in two modalities. The first feeding modality is in-school feeding, whereby children are fed in school either by serving hot meals or fortified high-energy biscuits or snacks. The second modality is the take-home rations, whereby families are given food upon the conditionality that their children attend school.[11] It is worth mentioning that the two modalities are different in their inputs and outcomes. For instance, take home rations have higher value transfer and lower administrative costs, while in school feeding is capped in its value transfer and require higher administrative costs. Moreover, take-home rations are usually appropriate when supporting orphans and or vulnerable children. That said, in-school meals have the potential of not only increasing school enrollment, but also reducing hunger and increasing attention span during the school day. When addressing public nutritional deficiencies, such as anemia, fortified food has been proven to be one of the most effective nutrition interventions in preventing such non-communicable illnesses. An intervention scheme in India, carried out from 2018 to 2020, that provided fortified rice to school-aged children has been acknowledged for its contribution to reducing anemia rates amongst children.[12] Though both modalities contribute in similar ways to increase school enrollment, choosing between both modalities will depend on the aspired impact the program wants to achieve. [13]
Best Practices
Some of the leading examples of school feeding programs in the world, is seen in Brazil where every child enrolled in public schools is served nutritionally balanced meals. Along with the meals served, a complementary nutrition education component that aims at nurturing healthy habits amongst students. The World Food Programme estimates that the Brazilian school feeding program feeds 43 million children.[14] Moreover, this Brazilian model adopts a whole cycle model, or a model known as Home Grown School Feeding model, whereby the school feeding program is connected with local food supply-chain. According to the Brazilian Federal Law around 30 percent of food procured for school-meals must be come from small-family-farms.[15]
Another example of a strong and most sustainable school feeding program can be found in Namibia, where the program is said to respond to community needs, locally-owned and incorporates some sort of parental or community contribution. In Namibia, communities are asked to provide cooking utensils, fuel and storerooms, while in countries like Chile school feeding programs include provide indirect benefits like employment opportunities whereby mothers from low-income class receive catering training.[16]
Figure 1 below presents a brief overview of type of SFP, budget, project leader from fourteen school feeding programs across the global.
Way Forward
Given that school feeding programs usually cost a small fraction of educational expenses (with about 10 to 15 percent) of money spent on food purchase, analysis show a strong political will to continue funding school feeding programs. [17] This is particularly because governments use school feeding programs as a popular social protection intervention. Moreover, school feeding programs present governments with tools to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals such as Goal No. 2 “Zero Hunger” and Goal No. 5 “Gender Equality”. School feeding programs help addressing the issue of food insecurity by providing meals equally to males and females school-aged children. These feeding programs help incentivize parents to not only send their male children to school, but also incentives them to send their female children to school instead of keeping them home to attend to domestic work. In light of the above, SFP should continue to remain a top priority on the national development agenda.
[1] FAO, School feeding, https://www.wfp.org/school-feeding
[2] Kearney J, Chapter 2 Literature synthesis: School feeding programmes and products, http://digiresearch.vut.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10352/90/06%20Kearney%20J%20%20Chapter%202.pdf?sequence=6&isAllowed=y
[3] WFP, School feeding-developing countries, https://centrodeexcelencia.org.br/en/school-feeding-developed-countries/
[4] Cupertino, A.; Ginani, V.; Cupertino, A.P.; Botelho, R.B.A. School Feeding Programs: What Happens Globally? Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 2265. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042265
[5] DSM, Nourishing the next generation with school feeding programs, https://www.dsm.com/human-nutrition/en/talking-nutrition/nourishing-the-next-generation-with-school-feeding-programs.html
[6] African Union, Homegrown school feeding a game changer for Africa's school children, https://au.int/en/pressreleases/20210301/homegrown-school-feeding-game-changer-africas-school-children
[7] WFP, WFP School Meals Factsheet Egypt Country Office, https://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/communications/wfp288663.pdf
[8] Chike Olisah, School Feeding Programme, https://nairametrics.com/2022/05/24/school-feeding-programme-fg-now-to-spend-about-n999-million-daily-on-10-million-pupils/
[9] School Meal Programs in Africa: Regional Results From the 2019 Global Survey of School Meal Programs, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.871866/full
[10] Samuel Wairimu, School feeding: Challenges, Trends and Opportunities, https://tmg-thinktank.com/school-feeding-challenges-trends-and-opportunities
[11] Bundy, Donald & Burbano, Carmen & Grosh, Margaret & Gelli, Aulo & Jukes, Matthew & Drake, Lesley & Bank, World. (2009). Rethinking School Feeding: Social Safety Nets, Child Development, and the Education Sector. http://lst-iiep.iiep-unesco.org/cgi-bin/wwwi32.exe/[in=epidoc1.in]/?t2000=027089/(100). 10.1596/978-0-8213-7974-5.
[12] Shridhar Venkat, Food Fortification is the Key to Solving India’s Nutritional Security Problem, https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/food-fortification-is-the-key-to-solving-indias-nutritional-security-problem-4637471.html
[13] Ibid
[14] WFP, School feeding-developing countries, https://centrodeexcelencia.org.br/en/school-feeding-developed-countries/
[15] World Bank, Global School Feeding Sourcebook: Key Findings, https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/brief/global-school-feeding-sourcebook-key-findings
[16] World Bank, Global School Feeding Sourcebook: Key Findings, https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/brief/global-school-feeding-sourcebook-key-findings
[17] World Bank, Global School Feeding Sourcebook: Key Findings, https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/afr/brief/global-school-feeding-sourcebook-key-findings
