Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
55
Another important intervention in increasing demand for education by poor households is
school feeding programmes. School feeding programmes provide incentives for poor families
to send their children to school while providing children with nutritional support and have been
implemented widely in the OIC as well. A total of 52 OIC countries – out of 54 with available data
– provide school meals to children.157 These programmes are either implemented by the
government, World Food Programme or other funders. The coverage ranges significantly between
member countries with close to 0 percent coverage in Indonesia and only 1 percent coverage in
Cameroon as opposed to universal coverage in Burkina Faso.158 An impact evaluation of one part
of the school feeding programme implemented in rural areas in Burkina Faso points to a modest
but positive effect on the enrolment outcomes of children. Measuring the impact of two food-for-
education programmes, where the first one is providing school lunches and the second one is
providing take home rations of cereal flour, 3-5 percentage point increases in girls and boys
enrolments were found.159 School lunches were also found to improve test scores of children in
Senegal. In the evaluation it was found that scores in mathematics were improved by 12.3 and in
French by 8.7 percentage points for children in Grade 2 of primary school.160 Results found were
not significant for the older children (in Grade 4).
Interventions addressing location
As can be seen from the school attendance gaps between children living in urban and
children living in rural areas, non-existence of schools in the vicinity of households is one
of the major barriers to accessing education for the children in the OIC. Eliminating this
distance has shown positive results for a number of OIC countries, and the results are significant
especially for girls. In Afghanistan, in a province (Ghor) where only 27 percent of families live
within 5 kilometres of a primary school a village-based school programme which does not
construct schools but uses available buildings instead resulted in significant improvements in
enrolment and test scores for children.161 The programme had a particularly positive impact on
girls. The enrolment rate of girls increased by 52 percentage points and the boys’ rate increased
by 35 percentage points resulting in an elimination of the gender gap (with only 4 percentage
points difference between girls and boys). In Burkina Faso, under a school construction program
financed by the Millennium Challenge Corporation with the goal of improving girls’ education
outcomes, schools were constructed in 132 villages. These schools provided better infrastructure
compared to regular schools in Burkina Faso including separate latrines for boys and girls,
housing for teachers and generally an improved school building. Results suggest that overall
enrolments increased by 19 percentage points with the girls’ enrolment increasing by 5
percentage points more than boys’ enrolment rates. A similar program was also implemented in
Niger, under a program (IMAGINE) financed again by Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)
157 WFP (2013)
158 WFP (2013)
159 Kazianga, de Walque, and Alderman (2012)
160 Diagne, Lô, Sokhna, and Diallo (2014)
161 Burde and Linden (2013)