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Guidelines on School Feeding and Nutrition Intervention Programme
Feeding and nutrition at school are important for Uganda, as it empowers the school
children and their parents in significant ways. Thus, feeding and nutrition education
programs are necessary in schools since they have been known to promote and improve
physiological growth, school enrolment, learning and overall cognition. Other benefits
include improved community participation, classroom concentration, and children’s inclass performance. Where nutrition and feeding programs are not well developed, or are
lacking altogether, the results are negative effects on child growth, development, and
educational achievement In addition, returns to family and national investment in
education are compromised. Consequently, national economic and human development
suffers.
These guidelines underscore the role of school feeding and nutrition as a tool for enhancing
and strengthening access to quality education, and for underwriting the achievement of
Education for All (EFA) objectives in Uganda. It is a strategic guide for operationalizing
and/or implementing the recent Cabinet directive specifying the separate modes of
financing in-school feeding programs in rural, and in urban schools. In approving a school
feeding program for UPE and UPPET school systems, Cabinet noted that (a) most guardians
and parents have failed to fulfill their responsibility of feeding their children while they are
at school; (b) reducing hunger and malnutrition was a critical element in improving
attendance, and (c) there were available options of feeding children at school, at some cost
to Government.
Other authorities for these guidelines include the (Pre-Primary, and Post Primary)
Education Act, 2008; the Uganda Child Statute, 1996; the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of Children, 1989; the Uganda Nutrition Action Plan, 2011 – 2016, and most
importantly, the National Development Plan, and the Constitution of the Republic of
Uganda (1995).
Lastly, the guidelines have been developed through consultative efforts of a large number
of stakeholders both in the Government and Private Sectors.
We therefore, reiterate Governments firm commitment to implementing these Uganda
National School Feeding Guidelines.