Parents’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Ghana’s School Feeding Programme in Improving Household Income: A Case Study of Assin South District in Ghana

In pursuit of the United Nations Development Goal of universal primary education, the Ghanaian government implemented the Ghana School Feeding Programme to increase school enrollment and mitigate poverty.This paper aims to determine whether or not the programme has successfully enhanced the financial circumstances of parents in each district.The philosophical paradigm of pragmatism, along with an explanatory sequential mixed design, was employed in the study.A basic random sampling procedure was utilised to select 63 samples out of a total of 109 respondents for the study.The study gathered respondents' perspectives and perceptions through questionnaires, informal interviews, and focus group discussions.The findings indicate that parents regarded the school feeding programme as efficacious in encouraging them to enrol their children due to alleviating feeding cost burdens (mean = 3.95, SD = 0.21).Furthermore, it was found that parents perceived the school feeding programme as a means to augment their income (Mean = 3.73, SD = 0.45).It was discovered that the number of dependents, age, marital status, and gender of the parents all had a statistically significant impact on the perceived efficacy of the school feeding programme.The research findings indicated that the school feeding programme significantly contributed to the rise in student enrollment by alleviating the financial burden it imposed on parents.The study suggests that the school feeding programme be expanded to include private schools and other institutions not currently included in the programme.The study contributes to advancing social support system fields of inquiry that suggest that external support and public good incentives significantly improve households' efforts to enrol their children in formal education.It also improves governance and policy decision-making, especially among governments and development partners connected with developing countries.Theoretically, this study contributes to the Incentive Theory of Motivation, which is extrinsic and applied in this field of inquiry.