Prioritize school meals to build back better from COVID-19
By Donald Bundy and Elisabeth Faure
© World Food Programme/Badre Bahaji
School feeding is a key response to the COVID-19 crisis globally. The COVID pandemic has closed schools across the world causing the greatest education crisis in human history. In reopening schools, school feeding programmes are crucial because they directly benefit children, in terms of education, health and well-being, while at the same time boosting food systems, resilience and local economies.
High and middle income countries have continued to invest in school feeding throughout the crisis. In the US, President Biden’s Rescue Plan specifically includes school meals, in the UK, the football star Marcus Rashford increased awareness of the government commitment to feed school children during vacations, while in India the government has sought to continue feeding 90 million school children every day whether schools are open or not.
Governments put school feeding programmes at the heart of community programmes
At the beginning of 2020, national school feeding programmes delivered school meals to more children than at any time in human history, making school feeding the most extensive social safety net in the world. One out of every two primary school children, or 388 million, received school meals every day from national programmes in at least 161 countries at all income levels. Over the last decade the number of children fed in schools in Africa increased by more than 70%. Globally, this growth reflected a widespread adoption as part of government policies for national development, with more than 90% of the cost of these programmes coming from domestic funds.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought this decade of global growth to a shuddering halt across the world
At the height of the crisis in April 2020, 161 countries had closed their schools and 370 million of the most vulnerable children were suddenly deprived of what was for many their main meal of the day. This loss highlighted the importance of school feeding as a social safety net which had protected the wellbeing of the most vulnerable children. The loss also sharpened global resolve to restore access to these vital safety nets as an urgent priority.
School feeding central to building back education
In a beyond-COVID world, school feeding programmes are even more of a priority investment because they support countries to build back better: helping build a healthy and educated population, while simultaneously laying the foundations for national growth and development.
Effective programmes help countries to support their children through the vital years of education leading up to adulthood. They sustain the gains made via investments in early child development, provide opportunities for children who are falling behind to catch-up, and support critical stages of brain and physical development.
Efficient programmes yield returns of US$9 for every US$1 invested, directly create some 2,000 new jobs for every 100,000 children fed, and create value across multiple sectors, including: education, health and nutrition, social protection, and local agriculture.
© World Food Programme/Antoine Vallas
A game-changer for girls
Equitable quality education is fundamental to achieving the empowerment and economic equality of girls and women, especially in developing contexts and countries struggling with conflict. Provision of meals at school encourages parents to send their girls to school with the assurance that the child will get at least one meal per school day, often equivalent to 10% of family income. This is crucial for human capital: the longer a girl child remains in school the lower the chances of being forced into early marriage, and the greater the chances of her learning how to read and gaining other vital skills.
Parliamentarians have a key role to play
More than 90% of school feeding worldwide is funded and managed by governments. The quality of the programmes is crucially dependent upon efficient programme designs, overseen by parliamentary systems. Responding to the COVID pandemic showed how agile the systems and government decision making need to be.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is leading a partnership to support the creation of a Global Research Consortium to help define good practices in school based programme governance and management. Early evidence from studies suggest that cross-parliamentary structures are crucial to responsive governance of social programmes; in the UK case the All Party Parliamentary Group on School Food is seen as a key factor in the long-term stability of the UK’s 100 year-plus programme.
A call to action
We need to restore what has been lost and improve it. We need better, more inclusive school feeding programmes for vulnerable children everywhere both as an urgent response to COVID and as a means for overcoming its worst effects. This is important for countries at all income levels. In the richest countries, the inequalities caused by the pandemic are already a topic of debate. We also need to help low income countries respond. There are too many children (especially girls) that are falling behind and may never catch up.
The vast majority of programmes are already government owned and domestically funded. By paying closer attention to this often neglected issue, MPs can make a huge difference to the quality of governance, especially by encouraging working across parties and across sectors.
WFP and the Global Research Consortium on School Health and Nutrition welcome the opportunity to work with MPs to help grow the quality and equity of school based programmes, and to ensure that there is a chance for every school child.
We are particularly pleased to be working with the International Parliamentary Network for Education to build understanding of the value of school feeding, improve the quality of programmes and expand their reach.
Donald Bundy is Professor of Epidemiology and Development and the Director of the Global Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.
Elisabeth Faure is the Director of the World Food Programme office in London, UK.
