Recent Publications

The main objectives of school feeding are conventionally stated in terms of child nutritional and education outcomes. The original purpose of feeding children at school was to protect them against the worst consequences of household food insecurity, and as such it can be viewed as a classic ‘social safety net’. However, the recognition that school feeding also achieves positive educational outcomes shifted the agenda beyond simply providing a consumption safety net, towards a more holistic ‘social protection’ plus ‘livelihood promotion’ function, given that educational outcomes build resilience and livelihood opportunities for the future.

Recently the school feeding discourse has shifted again, this time to ‘home-grown’ school feeding, reflecting the recent convergence in policy debates between agricultural and social protection policies, especially in Africa.

Read more: HGSF Working Paper Series #5 Home Grown School Feeding and Social Protection

HGSF Working Paper Series #4 Food Provision in Schools in Low and Middle Income Countries: Developing an Evidenced Based Programme Framework

School feeding is a complex intervention and designing effective programmes requires a research evidence base that allows careful trade-offs to be explored among approaches, methods of feeding and costs. 

The fourth paper in the HGSF Working Paper Series titled, Food Provision in Schools in Low and Middle Income Countries: Developing an Evidenced Based Programme Framework explores some of the trade-offs associated with the different methods of food service provision in schools, in terms of costs, benefits and the associated demand for food to develop an evidence based rationale for school feeding programmes.

Read more: HGSF Working Paper Series #4 Food Provision in Schools in Low and Middle Income Countries: Developing an Evidenced Based Programme Framework

HGSF Working Paper #3 Developing Rations for Home Grown School Feeding

Assessments conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in four countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Rwanda), recommended that “menu, kilocalorie, and nutritional guidelines” be established by countries participating in the HGSF initiative.

However, the need for these guidelines will depend on the objective of the ration itself, and determining the goal of the ration should be the first step for HGSF programmes. 

The third paper in the HGSF Working Paper Series titled, Developing Rations for Home Grown School Feeding discusses how to set the goals for rations based on educational and nutrition outcomes and suggests important factors for the development of a planning tool for the rations.   

Read more: HGSF Working Paper Series #3 Developing Rations for Home Grown School Feeding

HGSF Working Paper Series #2 Linking Agricultural Development to School Feeding

HGSF is conceived of as combining two distinct policy objectives: the first is a social protection objective focused on the health and nutritional status of school-age children, while the second focuses on the economic and technical transformation of small-scale agriculture.  

These objectives are addressed by two separate policy instruments: school feeding which looks at the social protection objective, and “structured demand” which represents the strategic use of public procurement (to supply school feeding programmes) in order to open new markets to family farmers and thus stimulate their investment in productivity enhancing technology.  

Read more: HGSF Working Paper Series #2 Linking Agricultural Development to School Feeding