Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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assistance to 300,000 pupils during the school year 2014/2015 and 112,000 pupils (609
schools) for the current school year.
Implementation of the activity: The activity is implemented in partnership with the
Ministry of National Education (MEN).
Format: On the basis of its availability, WFP provides assistance in food and/or cash, which
allows schoolchildren to benefit from one daily meal at school with 2 lunches (Full days:
Tuesday and Thursday) and 3 breakfasts (the other 3 days: Monday, Wednesday and Friday).
Management: At the school level, the school canteen (Procurement, Storage / Food
Management, Meal Preparation) is operated by the School Management Committee (CGE), in
which parents of pupils are heavily involved. The overall supervision of the program is
carried out by the Division of School Canteens (DCaS) of MEN, in conjunction with WFP and
other partners.
Monitoring: Regular monitoring of this program is carried out by canteen officers of the
Education and Training Inspectorates (IEF) under the supervision of the canteen officers of
the Inspection of Academies (IA), in conjunction with theWFP sub-offices at the regional level
and at the national level.
Innovation: The innovative approach of the school feeding program centers around (1) the
involvement of parents in the canteen which improves general parents’ participation in
school management (2) create and establish a very local supply chain for the provision of
WFP’s food support to the local economies (e.g. the ‘Purchase fromAfricans for Africa’ project
or ‘Community fields’ both initiatives that help local food production) (3) the introduction of
the "cash & voucher" method of supplying school canteens through food vouchers from local
retailers.
Evaluation: A randomized trial was used to evaluate the impact of the school feeding
programs on the performance of rural primary schools in Senegal. In the four poorest regions
of the country, 120 schools that do not have school canteens were selected and were assigned
randomly and evenly (60 each) to control and treatment groups. The results showed that the
school feeding program has a positive impact on the overall score of the students (5.51 points)
with a large impact on younger students’ (second grade) scores. The existence of a student-
parents association improves the impact of feeding. No impact was found when the class size
is higher than 40 students. The impact on cognitive skills is greater in younger students (aged
between 6 and 7 years). All results are significant at the 5% level. However, school feeding
does not significantly improve the internal efficiency of public primary schools: dropout and
repetition have certainly reduced, but no results are statistically significant. On the
nutritional aspect, canteens have positive external effects on dietary intake of children.
Box 7 Impact Evaluation of School Grants and Education Quality in Senegal
Under the Second Quality Education for All (QEFA2) project, the government provided grants
directly to schools under a results-based framework. The initiative entailed enhanced focus
on learning, use of innovative teaching practices, improved management and closer