SCHOOL FEEDING IN JAMAICA - A REVIEW OF ITS EVALUATION

This paper reviews two studies that evaluated the school feeding progr am in Jamaica. The first examined 115 children aged 12-13 y who were e nrolled in three classes in a poor, rural school. One class was served the standard school meal at 0900 whereas the other two classes served as controls. The outcome variables included school achievement, atten dance, and weight gain. After one semester, the class receiving the me al showed improved arithmetic scores and school attendance compared wi th the control classes; however, they showed no weight gain. The acade mic improvement remained significant after school attendance was contr olled for. It was therefore hypothesized that the gains in arithmetic resulted from the alleviation of hunger in the classroom. The other st udy, conducted in a metabolic ward, examined the effects of missing br eakfast on cognitive function in 90 children aged 9-10 y and of differ ing nutritional status. Using a crossover design, the investigators te sted each child on two mornings 1 wk apart, once after serving them br eakfast and second without. Breakfast, consisting of the school progra m meal, was served at 0800. When severely malnourished, stunted, or wa sted children received no breakfast, their performance in various cogn itive tests deteriorated. These results indicate that alleviation of h unger was one of the mechanisms by which school feeding improved acade mic achievement in the previous study. Undernourished children are mor e likely to benefit from school feeding programs than are adequately n ourished children.