Providing lunch for school children calls for joint effort

Katherine Nabuzale

What you need to know:

  • The past. Long before UPE was introduced, the issue of feeding children at school was solely the responsibility of parents. Most or all children would carry something to eat during break time.
  • Beyond the feeding initiatives, fighting negativity and attitudes of dependence, in other words, creating possibilities rather than remain preoccupied lamenting about difficulties, will enable the population to see and exploit opportunities within their midst rather than hope or look elsewhere for solutions.

The unity and equitable development of Uganda depends on a number of factors. However, the most paramount among them is providing an inclusive and quality education to all children regardless of geographical location and economic status of the family. Inadequate feeding, or indeed for some students and pupils, the complete lack of what to eat while at school, has been identified as one of the leading contributors to poor learning outcomes.

The importance of providing meals to students while they are at school is needless to emphasise, and this was recently echoed by Education minister Janet Museveni. But have today’s parents really become so selfish to the extent of refusing to feed their children while they are at school? Some argued that some parents are simply irresponsible and don’t prioritise the need to feed their children while they are at school. This sounds more like poor people are only poor because they spend their money on the wrong things.

We need to put this problem in the right perspective by examining what the constrains parents from feeding their children. It is always easier to apportion blame instead of getting to the bottom of a problem. Long before UPE was introduced, the issue of feeding children at school was solely the responsibility of parents. Most or all children would carry something to eat during break time. These ranged from roasted maize, cassava, potatoes, ripe bananas, sugar cane, etc, to a few coins to buy a snack at the school canteen or a kiosks, etc. This enabled them to focus on their studies.

Those were the days when one could talk of inclusive education. Parents were pleased to send their children to school because they expected good out of those schools yet many of them were poor. They understood their obligation to society and their children because the government and leadership did their part quite well. Schools were functioning. Today the problem is more complex and pervasive. There is a lot of disgruntlement both in and about schools, with growing popular disenchantment with poor community organisation, and non-performing local leadership, among others.
Despite government’s efforts to provide free education for all, a lot still needs to be done so as to achieve quality and inclusive education. A comprehensive approach to resolve the crisis of feeding school children that takes income and resource of the families into consideration, is likely to yield better results.
Nevertheless, a number of cross-cutting policy measures should guide the design, implementation and evaluation of a sustainable school feeding model. Some of which should include a strategy for sustainability. Bottom-up strategies that bring on board the opinions of parents and the local communities are more likely to win over top-down or command directives. There is need to sensitise communities to re-own their obligations to their children.

Children belong to the community as it benefits from their success. Therefore, the larger community should ensure that children do not starve while at school. Proper community leadership and organisation will help to persuade parents to provide meals for their children at school.
Whereas it is important for government to make polices, it is crucial that these policies are implemented effectively. For example, if government policy is that parents should feed their children at school, then it should ensure that the responsible officials or agencies is implement it.

There should be close supervision and timely assessment of poverty alleviation related projects. It is through successful eradication of poverty that community will be in position to provide the much needed basics like food for their children both at school and home.
By providing daily lunch to school children, we remove hunger as a barrier to learning. An active feeding programme encourages pupils to attend school and keeps them energetic and more focussed throughout the day.

What about children whose parents can hardly afford to feed them? Those shouldn’t be ignored as they, just like the rest, need a meal during school time. It is, therefore, necessary to consider a strategic all-inclusive feeding programme for all school-going children.
Strong institutional for implementation, monitoring, and accountability; the institutions under consideration are the schools, parents and the community whose shared efforts will see all children having a meal or a snack while at school. By ensuring that children have something to eat at school, enrollment and attendance will increase, thereby combating drop-out rates and improving cognitive abilities, as well as learning achievements.

– Strategy for local production and sourcing; In instances where some pupils are unable to carry food from home, the schools should improvise by sourcing for food stuffs from the community hence, supporting local production.
– Strong partnerships, inter-sectoral coordination, and community participation. The education sector is the foundation of all other sectors. It is therefore important to form meaningful partnerships with other sectors for effective performance of the education sector in the country.

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. School feeding programs reduce the costs of education and therefore allow for an increased number of girls to be sent to and stay in school. Furthermore, improvements in female literacy that come from a good education have been linked to declining rates of fertility, increased economic opportunities, and other markers of female empowerment.

By providing daily lunch to children in school we remove hunger as a barrier to learning. An active feeding programme encourages pupils to attend school in the first place and then keeps them energetic and more concentrated throughout the day. However, besides the parents catering for the meals of their children at school, there is need to make productive use of school land, where this is available, to produce food towards the feeding programme. Beyond the feeding initiatives, fighting negativity and attitudes of dependence, in other words, creating possibilities rather than remain preoccupied lamenting about difficulties, will enable the population to see and exploit opportunities within their midst rather than hope or look elsewhere for solutions.

Ms Nabuzale is a Ugandan living in Germany.
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