September 20, 2024 – POUIRKÈTA RITA NIKIEMA

Reprinted by permission from VoxDev. Original article here.

School feeding programmes are one of the widest and most popular social safety nets in the world. Globally, 418 million children are benefitting now from school meals (WFP 2022). These programmes play a huge role in improving educational outcomes for children. As developing countries have embarked on the path of universal education, many joined the Education for All initiative. Since then, policymakers have undertaken measures such as the Food for Education programme, to overcome the opportunity costs of sending children to school among poor and vulnerable households and increase enrolment and attendance among school-age children. Indeed, school-meal programmes act as an incentive for families to enrol their children in school and keep them there (WFP 2022). Previous research (Chakraborty and Jayaraman 2022) also found that midday meals improve children’s learning outcomes. 

My research (Nikiema 2019) considers how school feeding programmes may improve school enrolment and attendance in the context of Burkina Faso and the Catholic Relief Services school feeding “Beoog Biiga programme”. There are many challenges in access to education, including prohibitive school distances, financial costs, cultural barriers and the opportunity costs of sending girls to school who are expected to perform household chores and look after other children. These factors contribute to a high number of dropouts at an early age. The Northern Region suffers a particularly high rate – the grade five drop-out rate is 15-17% – often due to early marriage, puberty (and lack of proper sanitation facilities in schools) and work duties at home. 

School feeding programmes in Burkina Faso

School feeding programmes have been implemented since the period of severe famine in the Sahel region of West Africa. In Burkina Faso, school canteens were first introduced in the 1960s by the Catholic Relief Services (Cathwell). My research covers the region served by the Catholic Relief Services, and all schools that were listed in the academic year 2011–12, focusing on the central part of the northern region of Burkina Faso. Northern Burkina Faso is an appropriate context to evaluate the impact of Food for Education programmes for two main reasons. First, the region has low primary school participation. On average, only 53.5% of school-age children (6–11 years old) attend school (MENA 2012). Second, income levels are very low and severe food shortages are frequent. Hence, the value of the food offered should be a sufficient incentive to attract children to school. Households are largely dependent upon subsistence agriculture, and malnutrition is extremely high in the target area, with stunting occurring in 40% of children under the age of five.

Generally, a school feeding programme is implemented in two forms: an on-site meal called the ‘daily meal’ and a ‘take-home ration’. Under the daily meal programme, breakfast and/or lunch is served at the school every school day and is available to both boys and girls. Under the take-home ration, a pupil receives a certain amount of food staples each period conditional on maintaining a specified attendance rate during that period.

Beoog-Biiga programme effect on girls’ enrolment and attendance 

The data used in this study comes from two sources: the Catholic Relief Services (Burkina Faso) and the ministry of primary education. The latter provides administrative data on school characteristics drawn from its annual school surveys. The Catholic Relief Services provides data collected in 2011 on educational outcomes such as school enrolment and attendance. The “Beoog Biiga” is a multisectoral programme that was funded from 30 September 2011 to 31 December 2014 and implemented in partnership with the Government of Burkina Faso and local development organisations. The project targeted two provinces in the northern area, covering 684 schools and 134,128 pupils in its first year, including 62,442 girls.

The ‘Beoog Biiga’ programme is considered a joint feeding programme with two schemes: the first scheme is “daily meal only” (for all students) and the second scheme is the “daily meal + take-home ration” (daily meal for all students and take-home ration only for girls with 90% of attendance). To evaluate the impact of the take-home ration programme on girls’ enrolment and attendance I compare the “daily meal schools” versus the “daily meal + take-home ration schools”.

Take-home rations improve both boys’ and girls’ attendance rate

As reported by the Catholic Relief Services, attendance is measured by the average number of half-days of classes not missed by pupils in each school. The empirical results from my research suggest that on average the take-home ration programme improves pupils’ attendance rate – rising by 8.4 percentage points. However, boys observe a larger rise in attendance rate relative to girls suggesting the presence of spillover effects. The girls’ attendance rate increased by 6 percentage points against 8.4 percentage points for boys. This result can be explained by the fact that all schools within the programme provided a daily meal for all students, boys and girls.

Take-home rations increase girls’ enrolment rate within schools

Enrolment rate is defined as the number of boys or girls enrolled as a percentage of all pupils within schools. The empirical results reveal that girls’ enrolment rate increased significantly—by 3.2 percentage points—with the take-home ration scheme. It shows that while girls’ enrolment rate increased with take-home rations, the number of enrolled girls increased more than boys (six girls versus five boys). In addition, results show that the presence of female teachers in schools increases the impact of take-home rations on girls’ enrolment rate, as parents have more confidence sending their daughters to school where there are female teachers. Girls and their parents may regard a female teacher as proof of success, demonstrating that girls are not confined only to domestic tasks but can become more literate and practice a good job in the future.

School feeding programmes can improve girls’ educational attainment in poor and food insecure contexts

The study shows that school feeding through the  take-home ration programme in a specific context of food insecurity can increase school attendance and girls’ enrolment. However, the impact of this programme on nutrition and health remains to be investigated. Also, the study results suggest that school characteristics influenced the extent to which take-home rations improved school attendance and girls’ enrolment in the northern Burkina Faso.

The findings of this research have policy relevance: take-home rations improve school attendance for both boys and girls, and increase girls’ enrolment within schools. This carries long-term implications for gender equality in schools and girls’ educational attainment. Partners must continue to support governments and pursue the goal for every child to have access to a daily, healthy meal in school.

Pouirkèta Rita Nikiema is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Management at Université Norbert Zongo, Burkina Faso. She has worked as a Research Fellow at United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in 2022 and a short-term consultant at World Bank, Africa Region Chief Economist Office in 2020.

Photo by Silvanus Solomon: https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-children-wearing-white-headscarves-10002144/

References

WFP. (2022). State of School Feeding Worldwide 2022. Rome, World Food Programme.

Chakraborty, T and R, Jayaraman. (2022). Midday meals in India improve children’s learning outcomes. https://voxdev.org/topic/education/midday-meals-india-improve-childrens-learning-outcomes

Nikiema, P. R. (2019). The Impact of School Feeding Programmes on Educational Outcomes: Evidence from Burkina Faso. Journal of African Economies, 2019, Vol. 28, number 3, 323–341.

MENA (2012). Annuaires Statistiques de l’Education Nationale 2011/2012.