Currently, 418 million children receive school meals each day around the world. However, around 73 million young people in vulnerable situations do not receive them. Hunger affects concentration and learning capacity, taking opportunities away from children who are food insecure. Often, school meals are one of the only full meals that pupils have during the day.
School feeding programmes can help address this challenge. They are essential for guaranteeing access to adequate and healthy food for thousands of children around the world who are unable to eat outside of school. The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that every dollar invested in school feeding generates a return of up to nine dollars.
The WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil, in partnership with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC, in Portuguese) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Fund for Education Development (FNDE, in Portuguese), has launched the publication “School Feeding Models”, which provides an overview of the main models of school feeding programmes in the world.
How can school feeding models be categorised?
There are various approaches to implementing national school feeding programmes, varying according to the specific context. One way to categorise these models is by examining how financial resources are allocated to schools, which can be centralised, mixed or decentralised. Although they all share the goal of cultivating human capital, boosting national growth and fostering socio-economic development, each has distinct advantages and challenges.
The centralised model is the most widely adopted in the world, and its main characteristic is that it is managed at national level. The government is responsible for the budget, food purchases, distribution and monitoring of the activities and institutions that are part of the school feeding chain. An example of a country that adopts this model is Botswana, which provides meals for more than 330,000 primary school children across the country.
The decentralised model, on the other hand, involves the distribution of functions, resources and responsibilities, with less participation by the central government and greater involvement by other entities, such as states, municipalities, districts and regions. Ghana is a country that has adopted this model, outsourcing the purchase, processing and distribution of food. The programme stipulates that at least 80% of the food intended for school meals is purchased from family farmers.
The mixed model combines characteristics of the centralised and decentralised models. This is the case, for example, with the semi-decentralised model, in which responsibility for the school feeding programme lies between the central and local levels. India is a great example of this model. The Indian school feeding programme was created in 1995 and is the largest in the world in terms of the number of children served, providing food for 120 million children.
School feeding in Brazil
Brazil is a world reference when it comes to school meals. The National School Feeding Programme (PNAE, in Portuguese) is one of the largest in the world and serves more than 40 million students every day. Over the last twelve years, the WFP Centre of Excellence, in partnership with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Fund for Education Development, has supported several countries to improve their school feeding programmes based on the exchange of knowledge with the Brazilian government on the subject.
In 2021, ABC, FNDE and the Centre of Excellence jointly launched the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil”, which consists of a series of videos that simulate an immersion in the Brazilian PNAE, and is a central tool of the Centre of Excellence’s remote support methodology.
Over the last few years, Namibia, Angola, Ethiopia, Lesotho and Sierra Leone have benefited from the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil”. In some cases, the good practices and lessons learnt have led to subsequent high-level or technical visits to Brazil. Brazilian counterparts were also able to learn from the experiences shared by partner countries.