"School Nutrition Programme”
Sri Lanka
Availability, Vendor and Product Properties, Desirability, Norms and Preferences, Social Capital
National
Other (Please specify)
Ongoing
To ensure that students of every school will be provided with healthy and wholesome foods, under the regulations of the Food Act 1980 No.26 and the Consumers Affairs Authority Act No 09 of 2003 of Sri Lanka. Objective of to establish a Healthy and active younger generation and generating effective and productive individuals to the Nation through minimizing the nutritional problems among school children, improving daily attendance of the students, promoting better dietary habits and healthy life style.
Many surveys reveal that the physical, physiological and nurtritional status of school going children make a direct or indirect impact on the students' attendance, participation in learning and performances. Therefore, it is essential to improve the nutritional level of the children of school going age. Even-though it's expected to build school going children as a group with proper nutritional status, studies have revealed that children suffer from wasting, stunting, anemia and that adversely affects their health status and educational performances. Education and Health are closely interconnected. Proper health is important to receive abetter education. The basic platform of healthy life is nutrition. Accordingly, Health and Nutrition Branch of Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka has taken effective measures to provide balanced meal to school children
Policy is monitered by the Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka and ''The school food committee '' of the each school has the responsibilty of the programme
The recommended time to provide meals and milk is, the first hour after commencing the school that is from 7.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. If it’s difficult to provide the meals at given time, under special circumstances, the principal has the authority to change the time. However the meals should be given before 9.30 a.m. And 15 minutes should be allocated to consume meals. As milk is not a main meal, it could be given from 9.30 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. The meals should be provided according to the menus approved by the Ministry of Education. However, the menus can be changed based on the recommendations of School Health Promotion Committee considering the regional requirements. Under such situations, the principal should keep a note in the log book. According to the statistics of the year 2017, 1,105,605 students of 7871 schools are benefited from the school meal programme while 112,088 students of 414 schools are benefited from the programme of providing fresh milk.