Harnessing School Meals for Education, Child Nutrition, and Social Protection in Malawi

The intervention consists of the provision of one hot meal on each school day to all present children in all primary schools and ECD centers selected for the intervention. The meals are cooked on the school premises following a standard menu formulated by the World Food Programme.

2024-05-13

2027-04-30

The primary outcome variables are the following education and nutrition outcomes:
1. School attendance for primary school children
2. ECD enrollment status for children aged 3-5 years
3. Literacy score (EGRA) for primary school children
4. Numeracy score (EGMA) for primary school children
5. MDAT (early childhood development) score for children aged 3-5 years*
6. Height-for-Age Z-score for all children
7. Weight-for-Age Z-score for all children
8. BMI for for primary school children
9. Middle-Upper-Arm-Circumference for children aged 3-5 years

*MDAT stands for Malawi Development Assessment Tool. The score is calculated based on a series of developmental indicators for each child.

1. Household food consumption
2. Incidence of negative coping strategies against food insecurity
3. Incidence of negative coping strategies against other adverse shocks
4. Child labor
5. Willingness to pay for social services

The trial is part of phase two of a school feeding programme that was being implemented by the World Food Programme in four districts in southern Malawi. The current phase covers four education districts in northern Malawi: Rumphi, Mzimba South, Mzimba North and Nkhata bay. The eligibility of a primary school for inclusion in the programme is determined by the implementing partner (i.e. WFP) based on the feasibility of establishing a functional school meals programme in the school. The minimum criteria applied for eligibility are listed below:
- Exclude schools providing school meals to children in the 2023/24 academic year
- Have a functional school management committee (SMC)
- Have a functional parent teachers’ association (PTA)
- Have a functional procurement committee
- Have a functional finance committee
- Have a functional water source
- Have a tree grown woodlot
- Distance to nearest farmer organisation (FO) is less than 20km

It was decided by government and the funding organization to cover 200 primary schools and 78 ECD centers in the current phase of the school feeding programme. The study includes all 200 primary schools and 78 ECD centers to maximize statistical power. The four districts were assigned specific numbers of schools as part of the programming decision. Accordingly, the distribution of treatment schools is:
- Mzimba North: 50
- Mzimba South: 65
- Rumphi: 50
- Nkhata bay: 35

The 78 treatment ECD centers are distributed between the four districts in proportion to the number of schools. Therefore, the distribution of treatment ECD centers is:
- Mzimba North: 19
- Mzimba South: 26
- Rumphi: 19
- Nkhata bay: 14

Operationally, each treatment ECD center need to be paired with a treatment primary school because the procurement of food items for ECD centers will be handed by primary schools. Therefore, the randomization processes proceeded in two stages. In the first stage, we randomly selected 200 treatment and 200 control primary schools, out of a total of 526 eligible schools, as per the predetermined allocation of schools within each district stratum. Since we did not have baseline data at the time of randomization, we formed matched quadruplets based on school level variables from administrative data such as enrolment and pupil-teacher ratio to improve the balance. In the second stage, all ECD centers within a 2km radius from a treatment or control primary school were assessed for eligibility based on a series of indicators to determine their suitability for functional school meal programme. Subsequently, 78 treatment schools were randomly selected from the list of treatment schools with at least one eligible ECD center within a 2km radius. The associated ECD centers constitute the treatment group for ECD centers. If there is more than one eligible ECD center within a 2km radius from a selected school, the center with the highest eligibility score is included. Similarly, 78 control schools were randomly selected from the list of control schools with at least one eligible ECD center within a 2km radius. The associated ECD centers form the control group for ECD centers.

All children attending treatment ECDs and primary schools receive school meals while no student in the control schools participates in any formal school feeding scheme. Therefore, 10-12 children enrolled in each treatment or control school (and their households) were randomly selected for the study. On the ECD side, 8-10 children within the catchment area of each ECD center (i.e. approx. 2km radius) were sampled. Around half of these children were already enrolled in the respective ECD center while the other half were not. Children who were not enrolled in ECD centers at the time of sampling were included because one of the objectives of the study is to measure the impact of school meals on enrollment in ECD centers.

Not available

Randomization done in office by a computer

For both primary school and ECD-age children, the randomization unit is primary school.

Yes

400 schools

4800 primary school pupils, 1560 ECD-age children

Primary schools: 200 primary schools control, 200 primary schools school feeding intervention
ECD centers: 78 centers control, 78 centers school feeding intervention

Literacy: 0.18 s.d. Numeracy: 0.14 s.d. HAZ score: <0.1 s.d.