Monday, October 23, 2006 Editorial: Beyond feeding
FOR more than a year, grandmother Gloria Glinogo and neighbors leave farm and home chores to share cooking duties for the Monday, Wednesday and Friday feeding at their children’s school in upland Alegria, more than 100 kilometers from Cebu City.
Two hundred thirty-six pupils-Guadalupe Elementary School’s total population-fill their bowls and plastic containers with porridge or noodles fortified with monggo, vegetables, sardines or egg.
The thrice-a-week feeding is budgeted P8,000 or P34 per pupil every month. Funds are solicited from various individuals and institutions by the Eskuyla Ko (I want to study) group of volunteers. The Parents, Teachers and Community Association prepares the meals, as well as contributes vegetables or root crops. Cooking utensils and other needs are provided by the teachers.
In 2005, Eskuyla Ko learned from teachers that pupils were inattentive, listless and failed to stay on for afternoon classes because many of them had no breakfast or packed a lunch. Subsistence farming is the barangay’s primary livelihood.
Last September 2006, during a visit, volunteers observed that some pupils ate only half of their mid-morning portions. The children saved the rest for lunch.
Debate
While government and non-government organizations support feeding programs to improve learning and reduce drop-out rates in public schools, others question its effectiveness.
According to the Oct. 16, 2006 issue of Sun.Star Cebu, Senate Minority Leader Aquino Pimentel Jr. questioned the “unusual” increase in the funding for the school feeding program for 2007.
The House approved close to P3 billion, which will be given to local government units (LGUs) to buy rice, instead of milk. Pointing out that 2007 is election year, Pimentel said the LGU practice to give rice to constituents “should not be done at the expense of our school children.”
According to a June 11, 2006 Manila Times special report on the impact of poverty and malnutrition on basic education, former senator Edgardo Angara called for full-scale investigation on allegations that up to four-fifths of the P1.6-billion budget, or P1.28 billion, could have been scammed in the “Rice-for-Schools” program during the Estrada presidency.
Angara said he received verified complaints that only 25 kilos of rice were given to qualified pupils, instead of 125 kilos, throughout the school year.
Cost versus results
Lack of safeguards in public spending is not the only controversy plaguing feeding programs. Studies show that in terms of achieving impact on dropouts and learning in primary school, feeding is the least effective but most cost-intensive of existing interventions.
A 1999 study commissioned by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development looked into the Philippine government’s Dropout Intervention Program in 1990-92. Based on results in 20 randomly selected schools in low-income areas and 10 control schools, the best option for replication due to its impact on dropout behavior and student learning is providing teachers with materials to help them pace student learning and involve parents in their children’s learning.
School feeding had the lowest justification for replication.
These findings were validated by a 2000 report of the United Nations (UN) Standing Committee on Nutrition. With or without parent partnerships, high-cost school feeding had no effect on dropouts and a weak impact on test scores.
The same UN study showed that improved materials for pupils had a strong effect on dropouts and a weak effect on test scores. If parents were involved in their children’s learning, improved materials had a weak effect on dropouts but a strong effect on test scores. Compared to feeding, materials interventions were low-cost.
Forms of hunger
Supporters of feeding programs contend that hunger and malnutrition are major impediments in school attendance and learning. According to the Manila Times special report, “about six million of (schoolchildren living below the poverty line) go to school hungry or in a state of malnutrition every day.”
To be more than a palliative, school feeding programs should have other features to be effective and sustainable. Both government and non-government sectors are involving communities and local government units to start school gardens, upland fishponds, mini-poultry farms and school canteens that can subsidize a portion of the feeding costs.
In the same Manila Times special report, Ms. Lulay de Vera-Mateo of Unicef Philippines noted that deworming must first be conducted. A 2003 Department of Education survey found that 51.6 percent to 77.7 percent of schoolchildren suffer from worm infestation.
While firmly believing that weekly feedings help address protein-energy malnutrition, iron-deficiency anemia and deficiencies in vitamin A and iodine among Guadalupe elementary pupils, Eskuyla Ko began also working with the school this year to start a library for students and teachers.
Donated encyclopedia, story books and textbooks are used during classes or the 30-minute “read-athon” during lunch break. Grade 6 teacher Corazon Fuentes, who consults the references to make science more interesting, says having books around “encourages students to start reading for life.”
No matter the intervention, schoolchildren stand to benefit when the public and private sectors get their acts together to support public primary education.
