Surveying the school feeding landscape with the Government of Rwanda

• In Event: Improving early grade literacy through sustainable school meals programmes

Proposal

School meals are one of the few education interventions that shows a positive impact on students’ learning, including literacy, and are more effective when implemented with supplementary activities focused on health, nutrition, and literacy (3IE 2016; USDA 2016; Jacoby et al 1996; Ahmed 2004). Since 2000, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been collaborating with the Government of Rwanda (GoR) to implement school feeding, resulting in a National School Feeding Programme (NSFP).
The current WFP school feeding programme has adopted a holistic approach to improve education outcomes through five interventions: nutritious school meals, literacy interventions, health interventions, nutrition interventions, and government capacity strengthening. Based on programmatic evidence, in 2021 the GoR scaled up their school feeding programme from 600,000 to 3.3 million schoolchildren, achieving universal coverage. However, there was still a need to assess compliance with the School Feeding Operational Guidelines, identify implementation challenges, and generate recommendations to strengthen the nascent NSFP. WFP was also interested in identifying specific areas to enhance government capacity before transitioning WFP programme schools into the NSFP.
GoR, in partnership with WFP, designed and implemented the first National School Feeding Survey (NSFS) during the first year of universal NSFP coverage. This nationally representative cross-sectional study, utilizing a primarily quantitative approach, showed the nascent NSFP was successful, and highlighted areas for further improvements (figure 1). GoR is using the findings to strengthen the NSFP, for example, by reducing parents’ financial contribution to only 10 percent of the school meal cost, a new procurement model for programmatic and cost efficiencies, and developing training packages for all tiers of NSFP stakeholders. WFP has also used the findings to identify how to better prepare schools and national systems for the transition of WFP-supported schools into the NSFP.
As all programmes benefit from gathering rigorous evidence, WFP can offer insights into working directly with Government to generate evidence for strengthened national, school-based programmes, as they did with the NSFS, which led to further joint evidence generation. Conducting the NSFS jointly and focusing on both the NSFP as well as WFP-supported schools was key, as was ensuring the findings were used by all parties to strengthen the NSFP and the transition of WFP-supported schools. With increased funds, the scope of the survey could have been expanded to include more than one school per sector as well as a stronger focus on WASH and gender-related aspects of the programme.
Given the commitment of GoR and local community support to NSFP, there is a strong foundation to sustain the results achieved under the WFP programme. However, economic impacts and high food prices might impact GoR’s ability to absorb all aspects of the comprehensive WFP-supported programme. A longer transition time might be needed to allow GoR to identify additional funding sources while simultaneously making the NSFP more cost-efficient.

Author

• Thotogelo Veronica Lentsoane, United Nations World Food Programme