Impact of school home grown feeding programme on pupils’ enrolment and performance in FCT Abuja, primary schools

Abstract

This study assessed the impact of the School Feeding Programme of public schools in Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Nigeria on enrolment and academic performance of the pupils. It was done with a view to establishing its impact on school enrolment and academic performance of the pupils. The study adopted the survey research design and obtained its data from primary and secondary sources through the administration of structured questionnaire on120 respondents in 12 selected public primary schools in FCT based on random sampling technique. An in-depth faceto- face interview of 20 purposively selected people involved in the general implementation and assessment of the school feeding programme complemented the questionnaire. The secondary sources included extrapolating themes and subject matter from published books, magazines, journal articles and government gazette. Administrative bottlenecks relating to processing of payments to vendors and suppliers, delays in crediting the accounts of the vendors and inability of the government of FCT to scale up the meals to senior classes in the schools were among the findings of the study. Based on the findings, the following recommendations were proffered: Government should increase the fund allocation for the programme to cater for the logistics problem associated with monitoring vehicles and to make provision for classroom furniture in schools to reduce classroom congestion; periodic evaluation should be carried out and records of enrolment should be carefully taken and adequately kept by the teachers for future reference for planning; and, government should make arrangement for food vendors prompt payment to reduce the rate at which some schools operate for a week or two without the pupils getting the one meal per day being provided by the government.