Nutrition linked to school performance

Dar es Salaam. Children who are well-nourished appear to perform better at school compared to those who are malnourished, new findings by a civil society organisation, Twaweza, shows.

The data on children’s learning outcomes and nutrition from 197,451 children and 68,588 households were collected over a period of three months (October-December last year).

Findings show that children, who are well-nourished are almost twice likely to possess Standard Two literacy and numeracy skills than those, who are malnourished.

Twaweza Executive Director Aidan Eyakuze pointed out that the new findings were confirming what was “intuitively” known by many.

However, he said the study was important at this time as it highlighted the link between the two aspects in the country’s current free education era.

“In this case,” he said, “research confirms what intuitively we all understand. In the current free education era, school meals and feeding programmes have fallen by the wayside.”

“Parents are also increasingly unwilling to contribute to schools, given the publicity around the abolition of parental contributions,” he noted.