The Impact of the Ghana School Feeding Programme on School Enrolment, Retention and Attendance in the Atwima Nwabiagya Municipal in the Ashanti Region of Ghana

Abstract

Education is recognized universally as a basic human right (Adekunle & Ogbogu, 2016). The article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 declared that everyone has the right to education. Elementary education under the article is required to be compulsory and free to all regardless of religion, gender, status or ethnic background. The education of the citizenry is crucial to the socioeconomic development of individuals and the whole nation (Braimah & Oduro-Ofori, 2005). It is a crucial process in the building of individual's social, economic and physical abilities required to survive and grow in a society (Dienye, 2011). Thus, a nation that fails to educate its people is stuffing them of their basic human rights and depriving them of sustained development now and in the future. Despite the rapid increase in the access to education in the Sub-Saharan Africa, 67 million children in the basic school are out of school or dropout due to poverty and hunger (World Food Programme, 2013). From this population of drop out children, 43% were boys and 57% were girls (WFP, 2013 as cited in Yendaw & Dayour, 2015). There is slow down of enrolment due to increasing dropout, especially in nations affected by political conflicts where about 40% of dropout children live (Yendaw & Dayour, 2015). The progress achieved in the decreasing of dropout children of primary school age declined immensely in 2005 and further deteriorated in 2008 to about 61 million (UNESCO, 2011 cited in Yendaw & Dayour, 2015). The drop out of children of primary school increased to about 31 million in 2010 (WFP, 2013). The Government of these countries has developed intense interest in arresting the situation through the revamping of the piloted school feeding programme in the sub region and Ghana is not an exception. Ghana in attempt to fulfilling her part in the article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights introduced the National School Feeding Programme in the 2005/2006 academic year (Osei-Fosu, 2011). In Sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana is the first of ten implementing school feeding programme (SFP) model. The Ghana school feeding programme (GSFP) began in selected communities in September 2005 with ten schools, one from each of the ten regions. The GSFP provides children in selected public primary schools and kindergartens with one hot, nutritious meal per day, using locally-grown

The experience of persons with disabilities as beneficiaries of Ghana’s District Assemblies Common Fund

“…The benefits of fund on beneficiaries' livelihood as evidenced in this paper is further consistent with Agyemang [25], and Edusei and colleagues [29]. We also found beneficiaries felt their sense of dignity was enhanced as a result of engaging in a livelihood generation activity and felt valued in their family and community life.…”

“…Fund recipients used funds to set up businesses or expanded existing ones, in addition to health and educational needs. Agyemang [25] further found 71% respondents indicating the Fund was useful for their livelihoods.…”

“…Moreover, the allocations were not sufficient to fulfill every request. This resulted in amounts been requested being halved or reduced to meet all requests at a time therefore rendering received funds insufficient for intended purpose [24,25]. Additionally, Edusei et al, [29] in their study established that beneficiaries used the funds for the intended purposes but doubted whether the DF made real impact in the lives of beneficiaries since received amounts were too small.…”

“…Beneficiaries preferred to receive substantial amounts that would make them self-sufficient for long periods and would thus help establish their income generating activities. From the perspective of FMC members, allocating reduced amounts of funds enabled more applicants to benefit from the program [25,27,29]. However, in the focus groups with beneficiaries, it was found that this dilution of the funds comes with a tradeoff of which limits the impact of the fund.…”

Impact of school meals on educational outcomes in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

“…A similar qualitative study in Ghana confirmed that teachers, caterers, parents and school administrators agreed with the fact that SFP had an impact on enrolment, attendance, completion and the academic performances of primary schoolchildren, in addition to cognitive development and the reduction of hunger ( 48 ) .…”