School Feeding Program and Students’ School Attendance in 12 Years Basic Education in Rwanda

Abstract

Feeding students especially at school increase the students’ school productivity due to the fact that students get opportunity to take lunch at school and continue their studies. The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between the  program of offering lunch to students and students’ attendance in Rusizi District. The target population was 360 respondents. From this population, a simple random sampling and convenient sampling techniques were used to get 189 respondents. Questionnaire, document analysis review and observation were used as data collection instruments. IBM SPSS version 23 was used in the study for the management of quantitative data. Besides, thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative findings. The findings revealed the implementation of lunch meal program is effective in terms of involvement of stakeholders with the mean of 3.51 and meal quality and quantity with the mean of 3.44 which is interpreted as high and assets and materials were rated as moderate. It was also found that the level of dropout has diminished considering the mean of 3.95, the level of absenteeism has diminished considering the mean of 3.42, the students can spend the whole day at school without any interruption considering the mean of 3.96, and it was revealed that students can endure long hours of teaching without showing fatigues considering the mean of 3.82. The study revealed that there is a statistical significant positive correlation between meal lunch program and school attendance where r= 0.771 and P= 0.016< 0.015. It is recommended that all involved stakeholders should work hand in hand to improve the program lunch mean at schools since it may help in producing students who are competent. Keywords: School, school attendance, school feeding program and 12 Years basic education