Working Paper

Evaluation of the Impact of School Canteen Programs on Internal efficiency of Schools, Cognitive Acquisitions and learning capacities of Students in rural primary Schools in Senegal

This study evaluates the impact of school canteen programs on the performance of rural
primary schools in Senegal using a “randomized experiment”. 120 schools which had never
had school canteens were selected in the four poorest regions of Senegal. They were
randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Students in the second (CP) and fourth
(CE2) years of primary school were observed in each of the selected schools. Many tests
were performed in order to verify the random nature of the treatment assignment. The results show that, at the school level, the two groups are relatively homogenous, but there are some differences at the individual level. Thus, the double difference methods used to estimate the impact of the meal program on academic performance. School canteens do not improve the internal efficacy of public
primary schools: dropouts and repeated grades have certainly decreased, but none of the
results are statistically significant. By improving the nutritional intake of children who benefit
from the meals supplied to the school, the canteens have positive externalities on the
nutritional intake of children living with the beneficiary students. Moreover, there are
interaction effects between the school canteen and two traditional schooling quality inputs:
poverty and class size. Regarding these results, we can state that universalizing school
canteens can be an effective method to accelerate progress towards quality education for
all.