School feeding: An overview and recent trends. Aulo Gelli, IFPRI.

1. School feeding: An overview and recent trends. Aulo Gelli, IFPRI. Save the Children Webinar,15thof July 2014, Washington DC.

2. Agenda • Rethinking school feeding? • Current status and recent trends • What is school feeding? • Simple idea but in practice quite complex • Home-Grown School Feeding? • Potential impact pathways • Education • Health and nutrition • Agriculture • Examples of trade-offs • Country examples: Ghana, Kenya, Mali

5. Quality of evidence of impact of health and food on education + = evidence from quasi-experimental evaluation ++ = evidence from at least one RCT +++ = evidence from more than one RCT NA = not assessed (Source: Bundy et al., 2009)

6. Quality of evidence of impact of food on nutrition and health (Source: Watkins et al., 2013) + = evidence from quasi-experimental evaluation ++ = evidence from at least one RCT +++ = evidence from more than one RCT NA = not assessed

7. Planning for sustainability Ratio of per child cost of school feeding in relation to per child cost of basic education, versus GDP per capita. • Sharp decrease in relative costs of school feeding as GDP rises. • Supporting countries through transition is a key role for development agencies. (Source: Bundy et al., 2009)

8. School feeding transition (Source: Bundy et al., 2009)

9. What is school feeding? • School feeding can be defined as the provision of food to children through schools • Two basic modalities: • On-site meals or snacks • Take-home rations conditional to attendance • In some contexts interventions combine on-site programmes with take-home rations targeting a specific group of vulnerable children

10. (Source: WFP)

11. Simple idea…but… • School feeding programmes can be very complex! • No one size fits all, very context specific • (See examples in the next slides…) • Opportunity to assist governments in improving scale-up of national programmes • What works where? • How much does it cost?

13. Linking agriculture, education, health and nutrition • In 2003 African governments included nationally sourced school feeding in Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) • Concept: harness structured demand from school food provision • Win-win for farmers and school children • NEPAD launched Home-Grown School Feeding programme, with 12 countries invited to implement pilots: • Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Nigeria are already implementing programs.

14. What is HGSF? • Emphasis has been on nationalownership • Home-Grown not limited to “local” • HGSF can have 3 target groups: • school children • small scale farmers (food production) • community stakeholders (food preparation) • Cross-cutting gender dimension • HGSF policy objectives include: • For children: improved access to education, cognition and learning (plus health and nutrition) • For farmers and community stakeholders: improved food security, including food availability, access and utilisation (see FAO framework)

15. What is the evidence? • Evidence underpinning SF and benefits to school children is fairly well established • Gap in terms of agriculture component • Are explicit interventions (other than cash for food) required to support impact on agriculture? • E.g. Sensitisation campaigns around improved production practices, income generation activities and on improved household nutrition practices • What is the impact on smallholder farmer households?

16. Complex impact pathways School feeding Education Nutrition & health Agriculture

17. Education pathways

18. Nutrition pathways

19. Agriculture pathways

20. Some trade-offs : Back of the envelope figures relative to cooked meals

21. In Mali… Source: WFP.

22. Whilst in Kenya… Sources: USAID, (2010); MEASURE DHS, (2009).

23. Ghana: Decentralised third party model

24. Impact evaluations in Mali and Ghana • Current models can be improved to allow for small holder farmer participation • Develop innovative pilot integrating explicit agriculture and nutrition components (HGSF+) • Strengthen M&E and information flow between different actors • Proposed approach • Pilot innovative model (HGSF+) within existing national programme framework • Evaluate pilot (alongside standard SF model) within on-going M&E system strengthening activities

25. Main study outcomes

26. Some reflections… • Multisectoral intervention • Working across traditional disciplines… • Data collection timings and seasonality • e.g. agriculture, schooling, health… • Evaluation around scale-up of national programme • Buy-in from policymakers… • Changing political context • Coup d'état + invasion in Mali, elections in Ghana…

27. Thank you! • Slides build on: • Masset E and Gelli A. Community participation and the links between agriculture, nutrition and education: design of a randomised field experiment of “home-grown” school feeding in Mali. Trials, 2013. • Gelli A, Kretschmer A, Molinas L. & Regnault de la Mothe M. A comparison of supply chains for school food: exploring operational trade-offs across implementation models. HGSF Working Paper Series . London, PCD, 2012. http://hgsf-global.org/ www.a4nh.cgiar.org

28. School feeding cost and outcomes Source: Galloway R, Kristjansson E, Gelli A, Meir U, Espejo F, and Bundy, D. 2009.

29. Costs and cost-efficiency estimates • Take home rations, targeted to households, cost US$ 75 per child per year • Share of food costs: school meals (56%), biscuits (74%), take-home rations (68%)

30. Randomised field experiments • Impact evaluation of national programmes • 116 schools, randomised • 29 SF standard • 29 HGSF+ pilot • 58 no school feeding (control group- get SF after year 2) • Integrate evaluations within monitoring of the national programme • Government regular monitoring (monthly/quarterly) • 2 year studies • Mali baseline completed January 2012 • Ghana baseline underway June 2013

31. 58 districts (116 schools) 1st stage randomisation 29 HGSF+ districts (58 schools) 29 GSFP districts (58 schools) 2nd stage randomisation 29 HGSF+ schools (725 HH) 29 control schools (580 HH) 29 control schools (580 HH) 29 GSFP schools (725 HH) 3rd stage randomisation (Ghana only) 14 HGSF++ schools (225 HH) 15 HGSF+ schools (225 HH) 15 control schools (225 HH) 15 GSFP schools (225 HH)