School meals in the 21st century – emerging evidence and future directions

28 January 2025 @9:30am EST. Hybrid Policy Seminar, School meals in the 21st century – emerging evidence and future directions

School feeding programs, or school meals, are a widely implemented safety net with documented impacts across social protection, education, health and nutrition dimensions, and substantial projected economic returns to investment. Globally, programs reach over 400 million children for a total investment of over $50 billion a year. By being most effective for the most disadvantaged children, school meal programs can “level the playing field” in education, health, and nutrition. Experiences in high- and middle-income countries have also linked school meals to food systems transformation, where food procurement for school meals is used as an outlet for commercial farmers. National governments in LIMCs have shown interest in explicitly linking food systems transformation with the school feeding market through “home-grown” school feeding (HGSF). In HGSF, the “structured demand” for school food and related services is channeled to smallholders and other supply chain actors with the intent of stimulating agricultural productivity, increasing incomes, improving diets, and reducing food insecurity.

In practice, however, there is little rigorous evidence on the effects on smallholders of participation in school meal programs. The evidence on the effects of school meals on school-age children’s diets and food-related behaviors is also limited. In addition, school meal programs are being designed to also include objectives related to environmental boundaries and sustainability, though these links have yet to be extensively studied. Given the large-scale investment made for school meals globally, strengthening the monitoring, evaluation, and accountability of the investments is paramount.

The School Meals Coalition created in 2021, involving 90 member countries, has brought momentum and new opportunities for school meals, including three global research initiatives — the Sustainable Financing Initiative, the Data and Monitoring Initiative, and the Research Consortium on School Health and Nutrition (SHN). While there is already a strong evidence base for school meal programs, the SHN together with IFPRI have identified specific gaps in the current evidence on effectiveness and a particular lack of clarity around costs.

4 February 2025. A second hybrid seminar will be held on February 4 by IFPRI and the Global Child Nutrition Foundation (GCNF)

This event will launch School Meals Around the World, the report of GCNF’s third Global Survey of School Meal Programs©, completed in 2024. The survey offers comprehensive global data on school meal coverage, financing, food baskets, laws and policies, home-grown school feeding, and more, thus serving as a foundation for monitoring global progress over time.