School feeding:
An overview and recent trends.
Aulo Gelli, IFPRI.
Save the Children Webinar,15th of July 2014, Washington DC.
Agenda
• Rethinking school feeding?
– Current status and recent trends
• What is school feeding?
– Simple idea but in practice quite complex
– Home-Grown School Feeding?
• Potential impact pathways
–
–
–
–
Education
Health and nutrition
Agriculture
Examples of trade-offs
• Country examples: Ghana, Kenya, Mali
Quality of evidence of impact of health and food on
education
School feeding
activity
Enrolment
Attendance
Educational
achievement
Cognition
In-school meals
+ (♀ effect)
+++
+++
+++
Take-home rations
+ (♀ effect)
+
++
++
Fortified biscuits
+
++
+
++
Supplementation
+
+++
+++
+++
Deworming
NA
+++
++
++
+ = evidence from quasi-experimental evaluation
++ = evidence from at least one RCT
+++ = evidence from more than one RCT
NA = not assessed
(Source: Bundy et al., 2009)
Quality of evidence of impact of food on nutrition
and health
School feeding
activity
Anthropometric status
Height/stunting
In-school meals
Take-home rations
Multiple
micronutrient
fortification
Multiple
micronutrient
powder
Weight/
underweight
Micronutrient status
Iron
Hemoglobin/
anemia
Iodine
Vitamin A
Zinc
B–vitamins
+++
+++
+
++
n.a.
+
+
+
++
++
n.a.
+
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
++
++
+++
+++
+
+++
+++
+
++
++
++
++
+
++
++
+
+ = evidence from quasi-experimental evaluation
++ = evidence from at least one RCT
+++ = evidence from more than one RCT
NA = not assessed
(Source: Watkins et al., 2013)
Planning for sustainability
Ratio of per child cost of school feeding in relation to per child cost of basic
education, versus GDP per capita.
•
•
Sharp decrease in
relative costs of
school feeding as
GDP rises.
Supporting
countries through
transition is a key
role for
development
agencies.
(Source: Bundy et al., 2009)
School feeding transition
(Source: Bundy et al., 2009)
What is school feeding?
• School feeding can be defined as the provision
of food to children through schools
• Two basic modalities:
– On-site meals or snacks
– Take-home rations conditional to attendance
• In some contexts interventions combine on-site
programmes with take-home rations targeting a
specific group of vulnerable children
(Source: WFP)
Simple idea…but…
• School feeding programmes can be very complex!
• No one size fits all, very context specific
– (See examples in the next slides…)
• Opportunity to assist governments in improving
scale-up of national programmes
– What works where?
– How much does it cost?
Linking agriculture, education, health and
nutrition
• In 2003 African governments included nationally
sourced school feeding in Comprehensive Africa
Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)
• Concept: harness structured demand from
school food provision
– Win-win for farmers and school children
• NEPAD launched Home-Grown School Feeding
programme, with 12 countries invited to
implement pilots:
– Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Nigeria are already
implementing programs.
What is HGSF?
• Emphasis has been on national ownership
– Home-Grown not limited to “local”
• HGSF can have 3 target groups:
–
–
–
–
school children
small scale farmers (food production)
community stakeholders (food preparation)
Cross-cutting gender dimension
• HGSF policy objectives include:
– For children: improved access to education, cognition and learning
(plus health and nutrition)
– For farmers and community stakeholders: improved food security,
including food availability, access and utilisation (see FAO
framework)
What is the evidence?
• Evidence underpinning SF and benefits to
school children is fairly well established
• Gap in terms of agriculture component
• Are explicit interventions (other than cash for
food) required to support impact on agriculture?
– E.g. Sensitisation campaigns around improved
production practices, income generation activities and
on improved household nutrition practices
• What is the impact on smallholder farmer
households?
Complex impact pathways
School feeding
Education
Nutrition & health
Agriculture
Education pathways
Nutrition pathways
Agriculture pathways
Some trade-offs : Back of the envelope figures
relative to cooked meals
Dimension \ Modality
Biscuits
Cooked meals
Take-home
rations
Outcomes (education)
~1
1
1+
Food quantity per child
per year
0.3
1 (25 kg)
3
Cost per child per year
0.5 ($25)
1 ($50)
1.5 ($75)
(School level cost per
child per year)
~0.4 ($2.4)
1 ($6)
~0.4 ($2.4)
Cost/protein or energy
output
~1
1
NA
Cost/micronutrient
output
0.3
1
NA
In Mali…
Tombouctou
Kidal
Mopti
Kayes Nord Koulikoro
nord
Koulikoro
Ségou
Sikasso
Source: WFP.
Mopti
Gao
Zones targeted for
school feeding
Food production
zones
Whilst in Kenya…
Sources: USAID, (2010); MEASURE DHS, (2009).
Ghana: Decentralised third party model
Impact evaluations in Mali and Ghana
• Current models can be improved to allow for
small holder farmer participation
– Develop innovative pilot integrating explicit agriculture
and nutrition components (HGSF+)
• Strengthen M&E and information flow between
different actors
• Proposed approach
1. Pilot innovative model (HGSF+) within existing
national programme framework
2. Evaluate pilot (alongside standard SF model) within
on-going M&E system strengthening activities
Main study outcomes
Indicator
Metric
Income
Farmer and caterer profits
Distributional effects
Farmers and caterers participating in the programme
Schooling
Enrolment, attendance, and completion
Attention and cognition
Digit span, Raven matrices (Ghana only)
Learning achievement
Scores on literacy and maths tests
Physical growth
Anthropometric measures of height and weight
Micronutrient status
Haemoglobin level (Ghana only)
Diet diversity
Household consumption
Social accountability
Parental monitoring and motivation
Some reflections…
• Multisectoral intervention
– Working across traditional disciplines…
• Data collection timings and seasonality
– e.g. agriculture, schooling, health…
• Evaluation around scale-up of national programme
– Buy-in from policymakers…
• Changing political context
– Coup d'état + invasion in Mali, elections in Ghana…
Thank you!
•
Slides build on:
–
–
Masset E and Gelli A. Community participation and the links between agriculture, nutrition and education: design of a randomised
field experiment of “home-grown” school feeding in Mali. Trials, 2013.
Gelli A, Kretschmer A, Molinas L. & Regnault de la Mothe M. A comparison of supply chains for school food: exploring operational
trade-offs across implementation models. HGSF Working Paper Series . London, PCD, 2012.
http://hgsf-global.org/
www.a4nh.cgiar.org
School feeding cost and outcomes
Source: Galloway R, Kristjansson E, Gelli A, Meir U, Espejo F, and Bundy, D. 2009.
Costs and cost-efficiency estimates
std. cost
std. cost per std. cost per per (mg)
Protein 100 kcals
(g) protein
iron
(g)
delivered
delivered
delivered
std. cost per
100 (mcg)
vitamin A
delivered
Full
costs
(USD)
Energy
(kcals)
Iron
(mg)
School
meals
(n=44)
48
735
9
20
7
3
8
25
Fortified
biscuits
(n=8)
23
262
7
7
8
3
3
9
• Take home rations, targeted to households, cost US$ 75 per child per
year
• Share of food costs: school meals (56%), biscuits (74%), take-home
rations (68%)
Randomised field experiments
• Impact evaluation of national programmes
– 116 schools, randomised
• 29 SF standard
• 29 HGSF+ pilot
• 58 no school feeding (control group- get SF after year 2)
• Integrate evaluations within monitoring of the
national programme
– Government regular monitoring (monthly/quarterly)
• 2 year studies
– Mali baseline completed January 2012
– Ghana baseline underway June 2013
58 districts
(116 schools)
1st stage randomisation
29 HGSF+
districts
(58 schools)
29 GSFP
districts
(58 schools)
2nd stage randomisation
29 HGSF+
schools
(725 HH)
29 control
schools
(580 HH)
29 control
schools
(580 HH)
29 GSFP
schools
(725 HH)
3rd stage randomisation
(Ghana only)
14 HGSF++
schools
(225 HH)
15 HGSF+
schools
(225 HH)
15 control
schools
(225 HH)
15 GSFP
schools
(225 HH)