Supporting parliamentary action for School meals

School meals: A toolkit for parliamentarians

School meal programmes are a proven and scalable way of supporting children’s health, improving their education and providing an essential safety net by protecting household incomes.

School meal programmes also have benefits for agriculture, climate, social cohesion and gender equality.

As a result, well-design school meal programmes are one of the most impactful and efficient interventions and can contribute directly to the achievement of at least nine of the Sustainable Development Goals; catalysing progress on poverty (SDG1), hunger and all forms of malnutrition (SDG2), health (SDG3), education (SDG4), gender equality (SDG5), sustainable consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13), peaceful and inclusive societies (SDG 16) and partnerships (SDG17).

Growing parliamentary support for school meals

Today 97 countries have joined the School Meals Coalition and are committed to harnessing the power of school meals and ensuring that every child receives a nutritious meal at school, every day by 2030.

Key to achieving this will be increasing parliamentary knowledge of and commitment to the creation, expansion and improvement of school meal programmes.

As a result, the International Parliamentary Network for Education with the support of the World Food Programme and Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, produced ‘School meals: A toolkit for parliamentarians’.

The toolkit provides members of parliament with the evidence to make the case for school meals along with actionable advice and guidance.

It has three key parts:

1. An introduction to school meals 

Part one provides a brief introduction to school meal programmes including how meals are provided and funded and the difference between universal and targeted eligibility for free or subsidised school meals. 

2. The case for school meals 

Part two sets out the overwhelming evidence that school meals programmes offer exceptionally high returns on investment along with the potential for large-scale benefits across a range of priority policy areas, including; 

  • Human Capital

  • Education

  • Healthy growth and development

  • Social protection

  • Agriculture

  • Climate and the environment

  • Supporting education during crises and conflict and 

  • Gender equality.

3. Actionable advice and guidance 

Part three of the toolkit explores how members of parliament can exercise their responsibilities to:

  • represent their constituents, 

  • advocate, 

  • legislate, 

  • budget, and

  • provide oversight of government action 

To create, expand and improve school meal programmes.

This includes how parliamentarians can expand and improve school meals programmes in their own country or region and has suggestions for how members of parliament in donor countries can increase humanitarian and development funding and support for school meals.