Background
Among children below five years in Uganda, three out of ten are short for their age (stunted), one out of ten have a low weight for their age (underweight), five out of ten do not have enough blood (anaemic), one out of ten have vitamin A deficiency (VAD) while one in every 25 are overweight (UDHS, 2016).
A child with the conditions above, is malnourished. The consequences of poor nutrition for school going children include: delay in enrollment, absenteeism, lack of concetration and poor performance in class, increased school dropouts, bad temper, other bad behaviours and other negative consequences.
For a child to be healthy and learn well, he/she must have good nutrition. Nutrition is the science of food and how the body uses this food to perform its functions. The food can be obtained from the garden, bought or received as a donation and has to be well prepared and eaten for the body to utilise it properly. It is therefore important for all children and older people to eat a variety of foods in the right amounts, live and practice healthy lifestyles as well as get timely treatment from a health facility when sick.
The Education and Sports Sector’s role in nutrition programming is reinforced among others, by the Education Act (2008), National Integrated Early Childhood Development (NIECD) Policy (2016) and the current Education Sector Strategic Plan. Implementation of ESSP aims at contributing to provision of equitable access to education for all eligible children at the primary and post-primary levels (MOES, 2017).
Under ESSP, the education sector has prioritized development and implementation of a strategy to address school feeding and nutrition for school-going children that includes continuous sensitization of parents about their role in feeding children. ESSP also prioritises participation of girls, women and other disadvantaged groups in Primary, Secondary and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)
Development of School feeding guidelines
The Ministry of Education and Sports recognizes that feeding at school is an essential component of a child friendly school, and that not feeding a child at school is a violation of the Uganda Nutrition Action Plan, and a violation of children’s rights under the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of the Child, and other international protocols and conventions to which Uganda is signatory.
The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) developed nutrition and school feeding guidelines which are intended to assist implementation of a parent-led school feeding programme to improve child health, nutrition and educational performance. They are intended for use by School Management Committees (SMCs), Boards of Governors (BoGs), and Parent Teacher Associations (PTAs), and by Local Authorities (sub-county, district and urban. Currently the Ministry of Education and Sports is fast-tracking the development of a School Feeding and Nutrition Policy
