School Feeding Evaluations
From this section you can access
all the information available on school feeding assessment issues.
Additionally, you can download relevant papers.
Go to the School Feeding Evaluations page, click here!
Key Information
The broad range of contexts in which FFE interventions have been designed and implemented has led to an increasing awareness of the potential benefits of FFE in different socio-economic dimensions, including education, nutrition, social equity and agricultural development. The impact of FFE on educational outcomes is perhaps the most studied. Evaluations of FFE programmes have shown that FFE programmes lead to increased enrolment and attendance (of girls in particular), reduced drop-out particularly in the lower primary school grades, and improved student learning capacity (see Adelman et al, 2006, for a recent review of FFE programme impact)
Conceptually, the nutritional gains in FFE reinforce the impact on education: For example, addressing micro-nutrient deficiencies, in particular iron and iodine, has been shown to have a positive impact on learning (Politt, 1989), as has the systematic de-worming of school age children in areas of high prevalence of intestinal helminths (Miguel & Kremer, 2001). Recognising that education and learning depend on good nutrition and health, FFE programmes increasingly operate under the umbrella of the FRESH (Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) Framework, an inter-sectoral initiative, providing the context for effective implementation of access to health and nutrition services within school health programmes.
Costs
The monitoring of financial inputs into Food for Education (FFE) is critical for a number of reasons, including accountability, transparency and equity. Assessing the cost of FFE is also crucial in terms of persuading partners of the financial feasibility of scaling up FFE programmes. FFE costs will be important in terms of identifying the size of the investments required to reach the EFA goals. However, the diversity and complexity of the different FFE operations poses a huge challenge in terms of obtaining a standardised methodology that can be meaningfully applied to all FFE interventions.
FFE costs depend on several different factors, including the composition and size of the ration, the caloric intake per day, the number of beneficiaries and the school feeding days per year. Logistics, security and climatic conditions will have an impact on programme expenditures. The geographical context will also affect the programme cost; operations in landlocked countries will generally face greater operational costs than in countries implementing the same type of programme that have access to the sea.
Download Papers