Assessment of the impact of school feeding program on students’ performance in Addis Ababa government primary school
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Date
2018-06
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
Background: School-age children face high levels of illness and malnutrition during their crucial growing years leading to decrease ability to pay attention and affecting their school performances. Reports indicate that school children can lose as much as 160 days each year due to illness because under nutrition magnifies the effect of every disease. Cognizant of the problem, School feeding program in Addis Ababa is launched in October 2015 through „‟YenatWeg‟‟ charity organization initiated by first lady W/ro Roman. The impact on the students‟ school performance has not yet been studied in urban settings.
Objectives: The objective of the study is to assess the impact of school feeding program on students‟ attendance, drop out and achievement test, in Addis Ababa government primary schools.
Methods: The overall design of this study is quasi experimental what is known as the “before – after” approach. A school based Study with retrospective analysis was employed among 200 students to assess the role of school feeding program on student‟s school performance in Addis Ababa government primary school 2017/2018. Multi stage sampling technique was employed to select study participants. School record review was done for data collection and Paired sample T-test was used for analyzing the result.
Result: The average absent days of 200 School feeding beneficiaries before SFP and after was 1.67 and 1.23 days respectively. The mean average absent days difference due to school feeding program was found 0.44 (CI 0.148 - 0.732) (t=2.967, P =0. 003).
Similarly the cumulative average of 200 School feeding beneficiaries before SFP and after were 67.61 and 69.02 from hundred respectively. The mean cumulative score difference due to school feeding program was found - 1.406 out of hundred (CI -2.24:-0.57) (t=-3.31, P = 0. 001). Findings from this study provide evidence that, though the result has shown School Feeding Program has some positive effect on children‟s academic achievement and attendance, yet the statistical association test of drop-out was found that the drop-out ratio before SFP and after SFP were not statistically different at 5% level (t = 0.453, P > 0. 05). Conclusion: The test statistics revealed that SFP has contributed significantly on attendance rate and academic performance of SFP beneficiaries.
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Keywords
School Feeding Program, SFP beneficiaries, Absence Rate, Drop-out Ratio, Achievement test Addis Ababa, Ethiopia