Introduction
In early 2020, the rapid spread of Covid-19 infections prompted governments worldwide to undertake stringent measures to curb its transmission. As a result, many countries closed schools and suspended in-person learning unprecedentedly. At the height of the crisis, between April and May 2020, an estimated 1.6 billion school-age children and youth across the world were affected by school closures.
In Malaysia, schools nationwide closed for a total of 41.5 out of 124 weeks from mid-February 2020 to 1st July 2022, longer than what the regional neighbours like Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia experienced. Although education continued with the shift towards digital learning, essential activities that used to take place within the school compound alongside classroom learning were halted. These included the suspension of school feeding programme, leaving many underprivileged students vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition during the public health crisis.
As highlighted in the State of Household 2024 report, the Covid-19 pandemic brought about profound impacts on the education outcomes of Malaysian students. School closures due to the pandemic caused significant disruptions to traditional schooling and widened the existing educational inequities, particularly among students with low socioeconomic status. However, some students experienced losses that extended beyond education during school closures. Students from low-income households also missed out on the opportunity to acquire nutritious meals that account for one-third of their daily calorific requirements.
Discussions on educational impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic often center on academic losses, but not so much is focused on the nutritional losses possibly experienced by school children who are dependent on school feeding programmes. This article aims to shed light on the disruptions to school feeding programmes during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how countries worldwide ensure the continuity of school meal provision amidst school closures.
Disruptions to School Feeding During Covid-19 Pandemic
Globally, around 370 million school children in 150 countries missed out on nutritious school meals they depended on during school closures. In Malaysia, over 500,000 students were enrolled in Rancangan Makanan Tambahan (RMT)—a national school feeding programme for primary school children from low-income households—before the pandemic. With schools closed during lockdowns, these students no longer had access to free school meals.
The consequences of such disruptions can be significant. For underprivileged students, attending school is not only an opportunity to learn and socialise, but also a chance to receive a nutritious meal that their family may otherwise be unable to provide. Missing school meals means missing a key source of nutrition essential to support their growth and development.
In addition, the suspension of school feeding programme has a major impact on families, given that school meals can help to alleviate their food expenditure. For low income households, school meals represent around 10% to 15% of their daily income, which can add up to a significant amount of expenses for those with multiple school-aged children. With school closures, these families may face greater financial pressure due to the need to spend more on food for their children.
Furthermore, heightened food insecurity caused by economic downturns and job losses may further compound the malnutrition risk these children face. During the pandemic, many families living in poverty were dependent on donations and food banks, making it even more challenging for them and their children to eat well or adequately.
Malnutrition in times of crisis has both immediate and long-term implications for school children eligible for school feeding programmes. In the short term, these children can become more susceptible to infections, considering that they are already nutritionally vulnerable before the pandemic. Furthermore, their learning capacity may also be affected, as hungry children cannot learn effectively, whether in school or at home.
Consequently, childhood malnutrition during the critical stage of physical growth and cognitive development can have lifelong impacts beyond health. Children who are malnourished are at higher risk of developing adverse health issues later in life, negatively affecting their education attainment, employment, productivity and earning potential. This can reinforce the vicious cycle of malnutrition and poverty.
Measures to Mitigate Disruptions to School Feeding: Global Experience
As school meals were not possible since schools were closed, some countries temporarily suspended their school feeding operations. However, many managed to devise and implement new adaptations to ensure the continuation of school meal provisions. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), an international humanitarian organisation, around 71 countries adopted alternatives to school feeding using modalities like take-home rations, food baskets, food vouchers and cash transfers. This section discusses the modalities commonly used by countries worldwide to replace on-site school feeding amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Take-home rations
During the pandemic, take-home rations or food baskets were the most commonly used modalities to replace school meals. Take-home rations are commonly used as a means to ensure the food security of people in emergency situations, such as conflicts and natural disasters, before the pandemic. Contrary to school meals, which are usually hot meals served at schools daily either as breakfast, lunch or snack, take-home rations refer to a basket of ingredients and food items provided for the child to take home.
Take-home rations are meant to be prepared and consumed at home, and are more targeted at the entire household. For students living in rural areas, food baskets containing both fresh and non-perishable items were found to be more appropriate, as they reduced the need for the students or their families to travel long distances frequently to access food.
In most cases, these food baskets were usually pre-packed by school staff or local retailers, with food quantities adjusted to the needs of each student’s family. There were mainly two modes of distribution for take-home rations: pick-up or home delivery. In countries that offered pick-ups of food baskets, strict scheduling was followed to avoid overcrowding. The frequency of pickups ranged from daily, weekly and bi-weekly to monthly depending on the type of food items provided, with food baskets containing fresh and minimally processed foods requiring more frequent pick-ups.
Home deliveries were also used in certain countries to distribute food baskets directly to the beneficiaries, especially families living in rural areas. In Colombia, healthy eating guidance, menu suggestions and instructions for hygiene and proper food preparation at home were also provided along with the food baskets to encourage appropriate utilisation of the ingredients and food items. Besides, as food shortages were an issue in certain areas, the local school feeding operators collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture to create directories of food producers, facilitating the supply of food and preventing the speculation of food prices.
Cash transfers and food vouchers
Some school feeding programmes switched to providing monetary support in the form of cash transfers or food vouchers with an amount equivalent to the daily cost of school meals as an alternative to on-site school feeding. This gave the families the option to purchase the ingredients and food items they prefer or need. For example, in certain states of Brazil, cash was transferred to families through reloadable magnetic cards with an amount sufficient for purchasing food items for students’ meals. In some cases, food vouchers were redeemable only for selected foods or at certain commercial food stores, limiting the autonomy of the beneficiaries in using these aids.
However, a fundamental disadvantage of using cash transfers to replace school meals is that beneficiaries may use the amount intended for purchasing healthy ingredients for their children’s meals on unhealthy foods or other items instead. This makes cash transfers more suitable to be used as a short-term immediate relief. When schools are closed over a prolonged period, it may be more effective to replace or complement cash transfers with food distribution to better ensure the food security of school children and their families.
Ready-to-eat meals
Less frequently, some countries continued to prepare ready-to-eat meals for daily pickup by students or their families. For example, at certain schools in Puerto Rico, school meals cooked by school cafeteria personnel were available for students via a “grab n' go” or takeaway mode. In some districts of the United States, curbside meal pickups were also offered, with some setting up multiple meal delivery sites in central community locations, such as community centres, apartment complexes and intersections along school bus routes to increase accessibility. For students who lived in remote areas, ready-to-eat meals were delivered directly to them. This means of food distribution helped to ensure the continuation of school meal provision while adhering to strict health and safety protocols during the pandemic.
Multimodal approach
In countries with decentralised school feeding programmes, a mix of modalities was often implemented across different localities. In these cases, a combination of ready-to-eat meals, food baskets, vouchers or cash transfers were usually provided for families whose children were eligible to receive free school meals. For example, different states in India had varied responses; some used home delivery of meals, some provided take-home rations while others provided cash transfers. In Finland, most of the schools that implemented remote learning provided hot or cold meals five times a week for students to bring home, while others distributed weekly food baskets, with a small proportion of the schools opting to distribute food vouchers or provide cash transfers. The multimodal approach allowed the autonomy of respective localities or schools to decide on the approaches best suited to their needs and capacities.
Malaysia’s Response to School Feeding Disruptions
Throughout the pandemic, the Malaysian government launched a series of stimulus packages comprising several aids and initiatives aimed at assisting individuals and households, revitalising businesses and boosting the economy. Assistance for households was mainly provided in the form of cash transfers, with amounts ranging from RM100 to RM1,800 and the objective of relieving financial burdens.
The government also worked with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to provide food and shelter for vulnerable communities, including the elderly, the Indigenous community and disabled individuals. Additionally, the government also launched the National Food Basket Programme, providing food baskets worth RM100 to each eligible household.
However, it remains unclear whether there have been any initiatives specifically aimed at addressing the disruptions to school meal provision under the Rancangan Makanan Tambahan (RMT). While the budgetary allocation for RMT was increased from RM295 million in 2020 to RM420 million in 2021, it is uncertain whether the allocated fund for RMT in 2020 was utilised or repurposed to ensure the nutrition security of RMT beneficiaries during school closures.
Lessons for Future Preparedness
Although each country’s response might be different from one another, learning from their experience will help inform a better response to mitigate school feeding disruptions during future emergencies. Overall, countries that successfully adapted their school feeding approaches during the pandemic showed the importance of flexibility and responsiveness to complex and rapidly changing conditions in implementing timely school feeding adaptations. While not fully replacing on-site school feeding programme, modalities such as take-home rations, food baskets, vouchers and cash transfers served as important ‘stop-gap’ measures, minimising the nutritional impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on school children.
Taking into account the food and nutritional needs of not just the students but also their households is crucial when designing the appropriate school feeding adaptations, considering that the families or caregivers will be responsible for feeding the children when they are out of school. In circumstances where cash or voucher transfers are to replace school meals, integrating such measures with the existing social protection structures is recommended.
Despite the variations in the modality used to replace in-school feeding, most countries followed the nutritional guidelines that were established for school meals pre-pandemic. This shows that maintaining or enhancing the nutritional quality of meals, take-home rations or food baskets is feasible and should continue to be a priority even in times of crisis. Rising food costs during the pandemic due to supply chain disruptions also highlighted the importance of strengthening local food supply chains and integrating local agri-businesses in school meal provision.
To ensure better preparedness for future school feeding disruptions, government should develop immediate, as well as medium- to long-term contingency plans and implementation guides. This will help facilitate quick responses and minimise interruptions to school feeding operations in emergency situations. Studies have shown that the success of school feeding adaptations during the pandemic was highly dependent on the pre-pandemic level of financial resources and autonomy of school feeding programmes. Hence, ensuring continued or greater financial support for RMT is one crucial step the government can take to ensure that the programme has the adequate capacity to mitigate similar disruptions in the future.
Concluding Remarks
The impacts of Covid-19 pandemic on school children are immeasurable and inequitable, with the socioeconomically disadvantaged ones being hit the hardest. The full extent of nutritional loss due to missed school meals during school closures and its implications remain uncertain because of the lack of monitoring. However, given the benefits school feeding programmes have on the health, educational outcomes and social development of school children, the disruptions to school meals provision during school closures likely had a negative impact on RMT beneficiaries, many of whom were already nutritionally vulnerable before the pandemic. Moving forward, improving the resilience of school health and nutrition programmes, including the school feeding programme, will be imperative to better prepare for future emergencies or crises and avoid compromising the nutrition of vulnerable children.
