Investigation Of School Feeding Program Implementation In Public Primary Schools

The short-term hunger is a common barrier to effective learning.Children who are affected by hunger in a long period of time due to low-income family are likely to have low capacity for effective learning.Many developing African countries including Tanzania,they experience high rates of childhood under-nutrition resulted from hunger which in turn affecting education system.Therefore,SFPs is a common intervention programs used to address these challenges in educations system.The aim of the study was to investigate SFP implementation issues specifically in public primary schools in Tabora Municipality,Tanzania.The study was guided by three specific objectives these are: To investigate the current implementation status of SFPs in primary schools;To identify the difficulties facing implementation of SFPs in public primary schools and To identify possible measures that could be taken to overcome difficulties facing implementation of SFPs.The findings based on the fisrt objective of this study revealed that there are two types of contributions made during operation of SFPs,these are in-kind contributions plus some cash and the other one is the monetary terms only.The results revealed that,parents are the only responsible group for contributing aforementioned types of contributions to the operation of the project.Also,some parents from school feeding committee are responsible to purchase food materials from the local available market.Under the same objective with reference to meals accessibility,it was also revealed that not all students have same access to school meal.Infact it was revealed that learners who are supposed to get school feeding meals are those whom their parents or guardian paid for them.Also,the findings reported that the quality of school meals are not diatery based meals instead it is the one which only reduce hunger to learners and support learning.Furthermore,the study investigated on the availability of an important places such as dining halls,kitchen,stores and others.The results revealed that most of public primary school have no permanent places like dining halls,kitchen,stores which are important for the operation of SFPs in their respective school.Findings based on the second objective of this study showed that respondents were strongly agreed that the implementation of SFPs is associated with lacks of enough funds,lacks financial support from both government and donors for its effective,efficiency as well as its sustainability.Also,the findings revealed that respondents agreed that the implementation of SFP is also associated with lack of regular monitoring and evaluations,lacks strong strategic plans for effective and improved SFP,little awareness on the importance of SFP to community,lack of accountability of members who are in charge to SFPs,poor contributions from parents,high food price fluctuation,high political interference,and lack good policy and guidelines governing its implementation.Fundings for second objective based on T-test revealed that only factors such as lack of enough funds,poor policy and guildeline for the operation of SFPs,lack of financial support from government and donors,high political interference were the significant factors facing implementation of SFPs because all of these had p-value less than 0.005(p<0.005).Conversely,other factors were not significant but they can be affecting program operation if they are not carefully taken.With this findings it was generally revealed that all mentioned factors are contributing to the failure of the operation of SFPs and therefore the government,stakeholders as well as the community should consider carefully these factors to ensure good quality of program operation.Findings based on the last research objective of this study explored various ways to be used in overcoming difficulties facing implementation of SFPs.Some of these were promotion of agricultural activities in the Country by introduction of school farms programs,educating society about the importance of SFPs,good planning and budgeting to SFP,conducting regular monitoring and evaluation to assess the program performance,government and stakeholders should assist the program through provision of financial support as few to mention.The validity and reliability of the research instruments was tested accordingly using various methods.A pilot study was used to test validity and reliability of qualitative based research instruments.On the other hands,a Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS)were used to test validity and reliability of quantitative data.For quantitative data,validity was tested using Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA)while internal consistency of reliability was tested by Cronbach’s alpha for both scale measures.The reliabilities of the two questionnaire scales current status of SFP implementation and difficulties facing SFP was found to be adequate with the values 0.896 and 0.793 respectively.In this study a total of eight-four(84)participants were used in collection of relevant information of the study.About respondent’s details,6 of them where Head Teachers,48 Teachers and 30 Parents who were selected from six(6)public primary schools in Tabora municipality.Among aforesaid number of participants,45 of them where males while other 39 where female respondents who were purposively selected from six public primary schools in Tabora municipality.From each school,the participants where as follows;first there where one head teacher,one school feeding teacher(school feeding coordinator),seven were other teachers and 5 where parents who were selected to represent the study sample.The head teacher who were selected from each school is generally in charge of any activities conducted in his or her school while a school feeding teacher is responsible in organizing all activities related to operation of SFPs in their respective schools.Conversely,parents who involved as participants to this study where those who belongs to school feeding committee and those who are responsible to perform different activities related to the operation of SFPs in their respective schools.The study used four instruments which are questionaire,semi-structured interview,observation and documentary reviews.The study used both qualitative and quantitative approach to collect relevant information of this study.On the side of qualitative approach interview guide were used to explore the desire results on the effectiveness of school feeding programs in public primary schools.