Gains of mid-day meal at school

It is the different types of infrastructural limitations that discourage many child students of the rural primary schools from attending classes. A large number of these institutions include schools run by the government. Thanks to the parents having dreams of seeing their children become fully literate, scores of them do not wean the child students from the primary level studies. Although they comprise a small segment, it's these conscious parents who have kept alive, in large part, the small students' habit of going to school. These parents are soon going to be joined by many others, especially the mothers, when they will see their loved ones do not have to attend classes without being fed during lunch-time.

The state of being hungry is, indisputably, a great deterrent to going ahead with studies --- be they at school or at home. The days of a new spectacle are set to replace soon this painful scenario in both the country's villages and the urban areas. The State Minister for Primary and Mass Education has been quoted recently by a news agency as saying the mid-day meal programme for primary school students would commence in November. The minister has dubbed the programme a pilot project. The project was likely to get the nod of ECNEC this month, he said, adding if that happened it would roll from the current or the next month.

It's worth mentioning that the government in August 2019 chalked out the National School Meal Policy aimed at providing mid-day meals to students at all government primary schools by the year of 2023. The programme is set to be launched to ensure children get at least 30 per cent of their required daily calorie intake at school. It has been learnt that there is a huge budgetary allocation for the primary school mid-day meal programme. Elaborating on it, the minister has said that under the project nutritious foods like biscuits, milk and eggs will be served to the students instead of cooked food. Apart from boosting the students' eagerness to continue their studies, the mid-day free meal at school is expected to prompt the parents to remain free of tension about their children's lunch. In short, the mid-day meal on school days is great news. Many may interpret it as a 'humanitarian strategy' to keep the generally reluctant small boys and girls close to their class-centred studies.

The programme of meals prepared at government primary schools for students is not unique to Bangladesh. Many least developed and developing countries have this system in place. Coming to Bangladesh, the dilapidated condition of the primary school buildings discourages the general students from attending classes. The overall condition deteriorates during the monsoon floods. Coming to school eventually proves to be veritable ordeals for the older children, who have to walk through ankle- to knee-deep flood water from home. Having a mid-day meal at school may somewhat compensate for their hazardous school attendance.

Notwithstanding these occasional disruptions to keep the mid-day meal programme functional, it is expected to emerge as a successful venture in the primary education sector. Given the traditional privileges found at the urban primary schools, prorammes like those of mid-day meal there may not face much problem. Conducting a multi-faceted programme of mid-day meal distribution at a rural school might prove full of unwarranted complications. It's up to the performance of both the school management bodies and the mass education authorities on which rests the ambitious programme's success. A foremost priority ought to be placed on the job being free of all types of irregularities.

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