Community Members’ Perception of School Feeding Programme on Pupils’ Academic Performance in Public Primary Schools in Ondo State, Nigeria

Community is a significant divide within the society. School Feeding Programme in Nigeria came into being to reduce hunger and malnutrition among school children and support the achievement of the Universal Basic Education’s mission of delivering high-quality education for all pupils. It is an intervention that provides one quality meal a day for school going children to retain them in school and enhance their academic performance in public primary schools in Ondo State, Nigeria because the percentage of early school leavers has continued to rise while the academic performance of those left in school too is very low.

The research design for the study was descriptive of survey type and ex-post facto. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 592 public primary school pupils from three selected local government areas in Ondo State. The first stage was simple random sampling technique to select one local government in each of the senatorial district namely: Akoko North East, Akure South, and Okitipupa. 140 Community members were selected through the use of convenience sampling method in the second stage. Descriptive and Inferential statistics was employed to test the hypothesis. Hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance.

Findings from the study showed that school feeding programme and community members’ perception significantly jointly predict primary school pupils’ academic performance [F2,137=106.855; p < .01]; such that both tested factors had yielded 61% variation (R2=0.61) in the change observed in pupils’ performance in public primary schools in this study. The hypothesis was denied and rejected.

Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that school feeding programme did not only enhance good academic performance or improve, sustain and increase pupils’ school attendance but also a potent predictor of learning outcomes. Therefore, it was recommended that government should strengthen community members and school feeding programme among pupils in Ondo State.

  Keywords: Community members, school feeding programme, academic performance, public primary school.