Impact of School Feeding Programme on Children’s Anthropometry and Learning Outcomes in Chikwawa District-Malawi

In order to improve school enrolment in Malawi, the government is implementing a School Feeding Programme (SFP) in Chikwawa, one of the worst hit Tropical Cyclone Freddy towns where thousands of people died and others displaced with extensive crops, animals and infrastructure damage in Malawi. Despite well implemented programme, there remains a need to comprehensively assess the impact of the SFP on Children’s Anthropometry and Learning outcome. The study aims to assess the effects of the programme on school children’s Anthropometry and Learning outcome. It is hoped that this study will help establish the impact of School Feeding Programme and its role in improving Anthropometry and Learning outcomes. This will help inform policy makers who make research based policies that benefit children in schools. A quantitative research with a between-subjects cross-sectional quasi-experimental design comparing three SFP and three non-SFP preschools were sampled through multi-staged stratified random sampling technique in Chikwawa District in Malawi. Two hundred and eight preschool children were administered with Zambia Child Assessment tools (ZamCAT). Data variables were analyzed and generated descriptive and inferential statistics using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20), WHO anthro and STATA version 17 to determine significant differences and relationship between Anthropometry and Learning outcomes. The results revealed a relationship; a marginal positive relationship was found between MUAC and letter naming scores (R=0.46). The study also found that relationship existed between height for age and letter naming scores (R=0.37). Therefore, policies on SFP in early education should be promoted with a scale up to other districts to ensure that children develop optimally and holistically as they pursue their education. Future research should also be done on a large scale longitudinally to further evaluate the effect of SFP on school trajectories and the modification effect of socio-economic status.