Survey reveals universal support among MPs for school feeding as a response to food crisis

• A survey of MPs, civil society organisations and government officials about their perceptions of and support for school feeding found:

  • Universal recognition that school meals should be part of the solution to hunger.

  • A lack of strategic and sustained engagement with MPs on school feeding from UN, Development Agencies and Civil Society.

  • MPs lack the information necessary to exercise their functions in support of expanding and improving school feeding.

School meals must be part of the solution to fighting hunger and malnutrition, was the message we received when surveying MPs, Government Officials, WFP Country Offices and NGO workers. 

However, these groups highlighted that they need additional support and information to grow the reach of school feeding and improve the quality of the meals that children receive at school.

Hunger crisis and school meals

Over 100 respondents from 54 countries confirmed the growing impact of the global food crisis which sees 345 million people threatened by acute food insecurity.

Respondents recognised that the food crises existed both within their countries and globally.

100% of MPs and 98% of respondents from civil society recognised that school feeding can play a central role in addressing the challenge of hunger and poor nutrition among children. Echoing the sentiment of Emmanuel Macron when he said that as the world fights a food crisis, “every child around the world should have daily access to healthy and nutritious school meals”.

Parliamentarians and school meals

“Parliamentarians play a critical role in expanding and improving school feeding domestically and internationally, as successful school feeding programmes can be advanced by parliamentary advocacy, legislation, domestic and international funding and of course the reach and quality of programmes can be improved when MPs hold governments to account for the promises they’ve made,” said IPNEd Director Joseph Nhan-O’Reilly.

However, despite the huge interest among MPs in scaling up school feeding, our survey found limited work by parliamentarians in support of school meals, which can be explained by the fact that civil society respondents overwhelmingly indicated that they weren’t actively working with parliamentarians on the issue.

A lack of high quality, accessible and evidence based information on the case for school children also limits progress.

When asked to what extent they had sufficient information to support their roles legislating for and financing school meals more than half of MPs reported that they had moderate or limited information.

The survey responses also revealed the opportunity to share information on the wider benefits of school feeding programmes and how an MP can support the financing of programmes.

Supporting MP action to expand school meals

The results of the survey will be used to inform the parliamentary toolkit and subsequent work, to provide MPs and key actors in the field the necessary information and support to scale up school feeding. 

Creating resources which will be utilised to help realise “the benefits of school meals which go far beyond a plate, they are a systematic change, they are a game changer” as argued by Ville Skinnari, the Finland Minister for Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade.