CORRELATION BETWEEN SCHOOL FEEDING PROGAM AND SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AMONG SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN IN MIESO DISTRICT, OROMIA REGIONAL STATE, EASTERN

Abstract

School feeding is helps to increase availability and provision of adequate food in terms of quantity, quality, and safety, as well as socio-cultural acceptability for school children. In Ethiopia, the Ministry of Education, has implemented school feeding interventions in multiple sites, including Mieso District. However, it is impact on the students’ academic performances is not well studied. Objective: To assess correlation between school Feeding Program and school performance among primary school children in Mieso District. Comparative cross sectional study design Methods and Materials: A mixed methods school based comparative cross-sectional study was employed among 423 students and the administration of questionnaire was supplemented by in-depth interview of 4 purposively selected school principals in 4 public elementary schools in Mieso District from September 2, 2020 to September 30, 2020. Simple random sampling techniques were used to select study participants. Secondary data was obtained from the roster and attendance card. The completeness of the questionnaires was checked and entered into Epi Data 3.2 and exported in to Statistical Package for Social Sciences software version 25 for analysis. Multiple linear regressions were used to assess the impact of school feeding programs on academic performance while adjusting for other variables. Statistical significance was declared at p-value <0.05. Result: The mean (±SD) of average marks of 2017/18 SFP beneficiaries (76.48 ± 11.27) was somewhat higher than non-beneficiaries (62.96 ± 9.56). SFP was associated with average performance of students in 2018/19 and the average score of students who are beneficiaries increased by 13.47 as compared to the non- beneficiaries group ( significant p- value of <0.001 and 95% CI ) [10.67,16.27]. In qualitative data, all the school principals agreed on the positive effect of the program in alleviating short-term hunger in schools. They also explained that the feeding scheme has substantially improved the school enrollment, dropout and absenteeism problems of school-age children. a school principal for one of the beneficiary schools with SFP said “I observe an increase in the number of children enrolled in our school. I think SFP is an important factor and should be further strengthened. In fact, it does not mean that there are no weaknesses with the existing programme. x Conclusion and recommendation: School feeding programs have a positive association as they were significantly associated with academic achievement in school children. Considering the positive effects of the school feeding program in improving the school children achievements, significant effort should be made to scale up the program in other food insecure areas.