Introduction
In an effort to revamp the educational sector of the country, Adebayo (2016) stated that the Nigerian government through the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo’s recently announced that the Buhari administration plans to revive the school feeding programme across public schools in the country. This declaration has been met with its fair share of public debate and conjecture. Osinbajo has been repeatedly quoted as saying that the “one meal a day” school feeding programme being proposed by the Nigerian government will attract N980 billion in investments, will create jobs, will boost the agricultural sector, have the potential of keeping pupils healthy and encouraging them to stay in school.
Ogbimi and Ogunba (2016) stated that a lot of people had applauded this bold declaration, recognizing the need to put in place a social safety net for school children and communities while others have called the initiative a step in the right direction and looking forward to details on how this programme will be implemented in a way that truly addresses the core concerns of a society where about 11 million children under the age of five are stunted.
The proposed school feeding undoubtedly has health, political, educational and socio-economic benefits. It positions the government as a caring, considerate body coming to the plight of the nation’s children, regardless of the fact that school children under the Universal Basic Education Commission [UBEC] Act has for many years included a right to at least one nutritious school meal a day, which has widely been ignored. It provides farmers with a niche market in which to sell their produce, and creates jobs for those who will prepare, supervise and serve the meals. It is potentially a win-win situation for both government and the people.
Buried beneath the politics of the school-feeding programme is an important lifeline, which is that school feeding has potentially huge health benefits. If the government does follow through on its plan to re-introduce the school feeding programme, the impact on the health of children will probably bring the biggest long term benefit for Nigeria, and will address some of the developmental challenges that children face in Nigeria. It is also an opportunity to deliver other primary health promotion interventions that will prepare our children to develop positive healthy habits and practices and become the leaders of a new Nigeria (Adebayo, 2016).
Conceptual framework
World Food Programme (2012) defined school-feeding programme as provision of meal, either breakfast or lunch to school children which is a targeted social safety nets that provide both educational and health benefits to the most vulnerable children, thereby increasing enrolment rates, reducing absenteeism, and improving food security at the household level. Beyond improvements in access to food, school feeding programs also have a positive impact on nutritional status, gender equity, and educational status, each of which contributes to improving overall levels of country and human development.
According to Bundy (2013), the term school feeding has been used over the years to mean the provision of meals or snacks at school to reduce children’s hunger during the school day. While some continue to define school feeding as in-school meals only. For most, however, school feeding has increasingly come to represent a more varied and comprehensive set of uses of food for the achievement of educational outcomes. In this more comprehensive definition Gilligan (2009) stated that school-feeding programme include “take-home” food rations provided as economic incentives to families (or foster families, or other child care institutions) in return for a child’s regular attendance at school, food provided to adults or youth who attend literacy or vocational training programs, food for pre-school activities with an educational component, and any one or more of the following at-school meals: breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, or dinner.
Historical perspective on school-feeding programme
The idea of the school meal or school feeding is not a new phenomenon. In Europe for example, its history “dates back from the mid-19th century” (Evans & Harper, 2009) resulting from the effects of both the industrial revolution and of the World War II. It is reported that, because of the economic crises, most of the families were unable to meet food costs and schoolchildren were therefore affected too (Burnett, 2008).
Benjamin Thompson (also known as Count Rumford) established the first known school-feeding program in Europe in Munich, Germany in 1790; his idea was to feed the hungry children. Thompson’s idea spread very quickly in other European countries and became introduced by charities and later by governments who enacted laws for the implementation of the school meals in the schools. Literature shows that, school meal programs in Europe were introduced in different periods from one country to the other. For example, it was introduced in Britain in 1789 at the first time in Manchester before being made national by the government in 1905. In Britain for example, in 1920 about one million children were taking school meals. Other countries that also introduced school meals include France (1865), Holland (1900), Switzerland (1930) and Italy (1890s). Food was introduced in schools in USA under the National School Lunch Program in 1946 and it became operational in both public and in private schools (Evans & Harper, 2009).
In Africa, during the colonial times, school meals were available to students in the boarding schools that were owned by the colonial governments and by the missionaries. Students who were in day schools did not get food at schools and instead they carried cooked foods that they had to eat during lunch hours (noon hours). They had to carry food because schools were scarce and sometimes not available to their nearby villages and thus students had to travel long distance like five or more kilometers to and from schools. However, very few had access to schools during the colonial times. The situation continued even after independence until 1990s when the idea of school meals was introduced by the United Nations under the World Food Program and other international organizations like Save the Children, Oxfam, Christian Relief Services and the like (Lema, Mbilinyi & Rajani, 2014).
In Nigeria, to improve the nutritional status of school children, the Federal Government launched the Home-Grown School Feeding and Health program in September 2005 under the coordination of the Federal Ministry of Education. The program aims to provide a nutritionally-adequate meal during the school day (Isa, Ahmed, Khalid & Sherif, 2012). The pilot phase (September, 2005 – July, 2006) was scheduled to involved twelve (12) States in the six geopolitical zones; Bauchi, Edo, Enugu, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Imo, Kano, Kogi, Nassarawa, Niger, Ogun, Yobe and Osun States, but due several bureaucratic challenges.
According to the Federal Government’s directive, the Federal, State and Local Government were to fund the program with State and Local Government providing the bulk. The focus of the program is to get every pupil fed with a quantitatively and qualitatively adequate meal each school day to ensure provision of healthy and inviting school environment, provision of health facilities to take care of pupils’ health needs and problems. The program is also aimed at boosting food production and farmers’ income since all food must be purchased from locality where schools are based (Olusanya, 2010).
The need for school feeding programme
According to the United Nations World Food Programme (2012), 66 million primary school age children go hungry every day, with 23 million hungry children in Africa alone. Furthermore, 80% of these 66 million children are concentrated within just 20 countries. Additionally, 75 million school-age children (55% of them girls) do not attend school, with 47% of them living in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the need to reduce hunger while increasing school enrollment in these children is evident, and school feeding programs have been developed to target this multifaceted problem.
Schools have become a natural and convenient setting for the implementation of health and education interventions. School feeding is just one facet of school health initiatives, as other programs may include de-worming, HIV/AIDS prevention and education, and life and health skills education. Overall, school feeding programs have been shown to directly increase the educational and nutritional status of recipient children, and indirectly impact the economic and social lives of themselves and their family. Additionally, school feeding directly addresses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of reducing hunger by one-half, achieving universal primary education, and achieving gender parity in education (Adelman, Daniel & Kim, 2008).
Types of school feeding programmes
According to World Food Programme (2012), there are two main ways to distribute food through school feeding programs: on-site meals and take-home rations. On-site meals are foods that are distributed to children while at school during morning and afternoon meal and snack times, which may include a bowl of porridge or nutrient-fortified crackers. Take-home rations are a collection of basic food items, such as a bag of rice and a bottle of cooking oil, which may be sent home and transferred to the families of girls that regularly attend school.
While the food items needed for school feeding programs may be imported into the country from anywhere throughout the world, an increasing number of countries and organizations are looking to expand what is called “home-grown school feeding,” which requires that provided food is produced and purchased within a country to the greatest extent possible. These programs provide an opportunity for children to receive improved nutrition and educational opportunities while also allowing smallholder farmers to benefit from access to a market with stable, structured, and predictable demand. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) guided governments in Sub-Saharan Africa to include home-grown school feeding as a critical intervention for the food security facet of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Several countries, including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya and Mali are currently taking part in home-grown school feeding programmes (Masset & Aulo, 2013).
Approaches to school feeding
According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (2012), there are five stages of school feeding. The first stage includes school feeding programs that rely mostly on external funding and implementation, while the last stage includes school feeding programs that rely mostly on internal government funding and implementation. Countries that are within the first stage include Afghanistan and Sudan, where country governments are unable to lead school feeding programs. Countries that are within the fifth stage include Chile and India, which have functional, country-led school feeding programs. This program involves technology that allows food to be centrally mass-produced and then distributed across the country.
In terms of external funding and implementation, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is the world’s leading provider of school feeding program financial contributions and program development. Many governments work alongside WFP in school-feeding programs, though in countries where the government is non-functional or corrupt, WFP may work on its own or with other non-governmental organizations. WFP has been working with governments around the world for over 45 years, but is shifting from a food aid organization to food assistance organization, working to move away from “individual, isolated projects to more strategic and comprehensive approaches.” (McEwan, 2013). To foster government ownership of school meals, WFP has implemented eight quality standards that guide the design and implementation of sustainable school meal programs:
- A strategy for sustainability,
- A national policy framework
- Stable funding and budgeting
- Needs-based, cost-effective quality programme design
- Strong institutional arrangements for implementation, monitoring, and accountability
- Strategy for local production and sourcing
- Strong partnerships
- Inter-sector coordination, and community participation and ownership.
Benefits of school-feeding programme
Adebayo (2016) stated in an interview with the Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Dr. Idiat Adebule, she highlighted the benefits of school-feeding programme to include:
· Nutrition and food security
· Education
· Gender equity
Nutrition and food security
School meals have been shown to increase the nutritional status of school-age children in a variety of ways. For example, there is a notable reduction in malnutrition via diet diversification and an increased absorption of micronutrients. Overall, the amount of kilocalories in a child’s diet is expanded when they are given nutritional resources that they would otherwise have little to no access to. By increasing the amount of nutrition a child receives at school, that child’s family’s nutrition status also increases as their familial demand and requirement for food is decreased (Tomlinson, 2007). Targeted take-home rations therefore increase the nutrition of the family as a whole, and not just the members of a given family that are of primary-school age. However, criticisms of school meals’ impacts on nutrition stem from the idea that increased nutrition through school meals is only a temporary fix and does not target the underlying causes of malnutrition, such as high food prices and poor food distribution systems that prevent food security (Adebayo, 2016).
Education
Education is a key component in school feeding programmes and global development because overall, a more educated person has an increased amount of opportunities in life, earns more money, and has a higher standard of living than an uneducated individual. School meals greatly impact recipient children’s education status by increasing school enrolment and attendance, decreasing drop-out rates, and improving cognitive abilities and learning achievements (Winch, 2011). Generally, sending children to a school in which school-meals are served offsets the financial and opportunity costs of schooling, and thus families are incentivized to send their children to school (Lawson, 2012).
Additionally, school feeding programs may serve as an incentive for students to go to school to receive food rather than missing out on food by staying home. The increased nutrition status of children, as a result of school feeding programs, also enhances students’ cognitive abilities and performance in school (Ahmed, 2007).
Gender equity
School feeding programs have the capacity to increase gender equity in access to education, which allows for gender equity across all spheres of social and economic life. There are a variety of reasons that girls’ education is impacted by factors on both the supply and demand side of schooling. These include gender-stereotyped curriculum and teaching practices, increased risks for girls’ safety outside of the house, socio-cultural practices that cause girls’ education to hold a very low value, and school infrastructure that is not suitable for girls (Ahmed, 2007).
Due to the combination of such barriers, girls are disproportionately affected by the direct and opportunity cost of schooling, which prevents girls from very poor households from attending school. Opportunity costs for girls’ education include lost time that would otherwise be spent doing household chores and care work. School feeding programs reduce the costs of sending girls to school and allow for an increased number of girls to be sent to school by their families. Furthermore, improvements in female literacy that come from increased education have been linked to declining rates of fertility, increased economic opportunities, and other markers of female empowerment (Adebayo, 2016).
Drawbacks and challenges to school feeding
While school feeding programs have a variety of positive impacts, there are some possible negative impacts these programs can cause. For example, school feeding programs can increase the cost of schooling by requiring that communities provide fire-wood for cooking as well as other items such as fresh-fruit, vegetables, and condiments. Additionally, communities are also expected to provide people who can cook these meals and maintain stores of all of the required food products, as well as kitchens and other fundamentals of meal provision. By causing a variety of needs and requirements to increase in a given community, the net benefit to a community from school feeding programmes may be reduced (Masset et al., 2013).
According to Isa et al. (2012), Challenges for school feeding programs can range from their high operational costs to the need to build the capacity to procure food locally. In order for a country to have an effective school feeding program that focuses their resources on the neediest children, countries must:
- determine if school feeding is the most effective social safety net option;
- set program objectives and predicted outcomes, and determine administrative costs;
- establish a system of effective targeting;
- select the type of food to be provided in school, explore opportunities for local procurement and the feasibility of offering take-home rations through the program;
- plan for school-level management, implementation, and monitoring of the ongoing school feeding activities; and
- determine if complementary health and nutrition activities such as de-worming, supplementation, or fortification can be incorporated into the program to achieve additional benefits.
Because school feeding programs are community-specific and require a great deal of planning, the sustainability of school feeding programs is a main point of concern for many countries. Countries are very limited on the demands placed on the staff, resources, and infrastructure required for school-feeding programs, and often has to rely on outside financial and personnel help to continue programs for a significant amount of time (Bundy, 2013)
Measures to improve school-feeding programme
In order to ensure the design and implementation of school-feeding programmes to realize this potential. The first recommendation calls for the establishment of a policy and objectives for school feeding programming and provides a framework within which to implement the subsequent recommendations that focus on the most critical aspects of school feeding programmes: targeting; cost and financing issues; ration composition and meal delivery; programme implementation; monitoring and evaluation; and integrating feeding with other interventions that address the nutrition and health needs of school children. More specifically World Food Programme (2012) recommended that school administrators should:
- Build up a consensus on a policy and objectives that focus on how school feeding can effectively contribute to improving education and meeting the nutrition and health needs of school-age children. School administrators need to agree on what problems or situations the school feeding programme will address, who the programme will serve, and which programme models are feasible for implementation.
- Develop targeting criteria and mechanisms that concentrate programme resources on high-risk children and communities. In view of the fact that resources are finite, particularly in the poorest countries, and that providing food is expensive, targeting is a critical element of any effort to improve the impact of a school-feeding programme on education. Targeting is essential if the programme is to reach families and communities lacking the resources to adequately provide for their school-age children or those that need to be motivated to enrol their children in school and to have them attend more regularly.
- Analyse and identify alternative financing and cost options for School-feeding programme. Feeding programmes of any kind are expensive. Financing may include international assistance, but in all cases, available public resources – or the potential to draw on them – are required. Cost alone can indicate little about the value of an SFP but, unfortunately, cost-effectiveness analyses, which assess costs relative to impact on nutrition and education outcomes, are for the most part unavailable.
- Elaborate appropriate guidelines for ration composition and the timing of school meals. To establish appropriate ration guidelines, school administrators need to analyse the nutrition and health needs of school-age children. Conditions such as levels of school enrolment, attendance, and performance, the availability of infrastructure and the capacity to implement different kinds of programmes also need to be assessed. Information is also required on the community’s perceptions and capacity to participate in school feeding programmes.
- Identify and address any potential bottlenecks in implementation, such as the availability of supplies and other resources, the appropriateness of cooking practices and the management of private sector inputs. This recommendation is particularly relevant for a school administrator who is already operating a programme. Once school feeding programmes are in place, altering them can meet strong resistance. However, a range of new experiences is now available that has the potential to alleviate some of the common obstacles to efficient and effective programming. Where a school feeding programme already exists, a wealth of information is readily accessible. A critical step towards a better programme is to thoroughly analyse this on-going experience. Develop monitoring systems that focus on programme processes, in other words, how well a programme is functioning and introduce an evaluation system to assess its impact on specific outcomes.
References
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