School Feeding Programs

Decades before the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were instituted to achieve universal primary education and reduced poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, many countries had [Page 1373]school feeding programs (SFPs) to address some of these challenges. School feeding occurs when school pupils are provided some form of meals at some point during the school day or their families are provided with food rations. SFPs are popular, multipurpose, propoor policy interventions that focus on attaining one or more of these goals: educational outcomes (enrollment, attendance and retention), food security and improvement in local agriculture, improvement in child health, and provision of social safety nets to less endowed families. This entry discusses the nature and rationale of SFPs, the pervasiveness of such programs, and their impacts and associated challenges.

In their study on the need to rethink school feeding programs, the World Bank and the World Food Programme noted that nearly every country in the world, both developed and developing, is implementing some form of SFP. Notable examples of SFPs are found in the United States, United Kingdom, Chile, Brazil, Kenya, Uganda, and Ghana. The study estimates that about 368 million children globally are benefitting from SFPs daily.

A key feature of SFPs is that they are usually implemented in public schools. In addition, various targeting mechanisms are employed to select the beneficiaries. In Chile, for example, schools are selected based on vulnerability index figures obtained from an annual census conducted in schools. Pupils deemed to fall outside the key characteristics in the vulnerability index are supposed to bring their own food to school. In Ghana, although less endowed, often rural public schools are targeted, all pupils in targeted schools become automatic beneficiaries of the program.

Many studies, including those by the World Food Programme, have found that SFPs have led to a significant increase in the enrollment figures of beneficiary schools. In some cases it has been shown that enrollment figures doubled in the initial stages of the program. These programs offer an additional incentive for school children to be punctual when coming to school because food provided during school hours in some cases could be their only meal for the day. In countries where poverty and malnutrition are pronounced, school feeding contributes to the readiness of pupils to learn as the burden of contending with their nutritional needs is reduced.

Notwithstanding, it has been contended that the improvements brought about by school feeding with regard to enrollment, attendance, and retention are often more visible in developing countries where poverty levels are more pronounced. In other words, in the developed world, where many parents can afford packaged food for their children, attendance and retention are taken as givens, and there is no driving motivation to enroll in particular schools on the basis of access to food. For example, in the United Kingdom, it has been noted that some pupils hardly patronize feeding programs for fear of stigmatization.

Health is another significant area of improvement with the introduction of SFPs. Given that over 175 million children suffer from malnutrition annually, it follows that their physical development, health, and cognitive potential would be hampered. There is evidence that the introduction of feeding programs has helped provide the required nutrients that aid children’s physical development and subsequent educational achievement. In many countries, school feeding efforts are part of concerted school health programs, which involve nutritional education, deworming exercises, and talks on healthy living. Also, meals with varied nutritional and caloric contents, for instance, are provided for beneficiaries based on age and vulnerability status as a measure to forestall any deficiencies that the pupils might suffer as a result of the lack of required nutrients at the early stages of their development.

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