An Assessment of The Effectiveness of The Home Grown School Feeding Programme in Primary Schools in Cross River State, Nigeria

It is estimated that about 7.3 million children are out of school in Nigeria. The Federal Government of Nigeria, aware of the importance of education, healthy living among school children and how it affects their academic performance, launched the Home-Grown School Feeding programme with the aim of supporting children from poor homes. The school feeding programme was to provide one meal per school day to all primary school pupils in Nigeria with the objective of improving the health of school age children, increase their enrolment, retention and completion rate in the primary school. This study therefore seeks to investigate the effectiveness of the Home Grown School feeding programme in primary schools in Cross River State. It specifically investigated Source of food provided for the feeding of the pupils, the frequency of feeding of the pupils, whether the school feeding programme in the state has any impact on the enrolment of pupils in primary schools in the state, effect of the programme on the academic performance of pupils in the state and the problems hindering the effective implementation of the programme To achieve this purpose, of the study, five research questions were formulated to guide the study. Ex-post facto research design was adopted for the study, One hundred and five head teachers and teachers were sampled for the study using stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques. A four point Likert scale questionnaire was used for data collection Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation was used in the analysis of data which was presented in tables for easy communication. The result of analysis revealed that the food used in the feeding of the pupils in Cross River State was not sourced from the local market, the feeding patterns of the pupils did not agree with the objectives of the programme, the school feeding programme in the state impacted on the enrolment of pupils in primary schools, the school feeding programme in the state impacted on the academic performance of pupils positively, respondents identified lack of effective supervision of the programme, late release of funds, inappropriate selection of cooks and no clear definition of responsibilities among the partners as some of the associated with the implementation of the programme.Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that There should be increased funding and prompt release of funds for the programme to avoid the situation where pupils are left for a long time without being fed due to lack of funds.