School meals plan bears fruit

Government initiative has improved rural students’ physical fitness

Beijing: China’s nutritious meal programme has improved rural students’ physical fitness and helped more students to study in rural schools.

“The average height and weight of students in our school have greatly improved since the introduction of nutritional food,” said Zhang Yongming, head teacher of Gejia Primary School in Gejiu, a city of Yunnan province.

Zhang, who has worked in education sector for more than 10 years, said that every student in his school can receive four yuan worth of nutritional meals every day, including three yuan meat, vegetable and one yuan rice.

“Ever since the nutrition plan took effect, the students’ parents have been worrying less,” he added. There are 129 students in this school.

Dai Meiqin, whose two children

are studying in the school, said, “The meals secure the needed nutrition for my kids ... and the meals are of good quality.”

“The meals help us a lot as the children are in their growth period,” said Li Yingxiang, whose children are also studying in this school.

The government has invested 47.2bil yuan (RM30bil) in its rural nutrition programme since 2011, and 32.2 million children have reaped the benefits, the Ministry of Education said in 2015.

The programme was launched to address malnutrition in rural areas, when it began to allocate three yuan (RM1.9) a day to students to supplement their diets with nutritious meals.

The money has been distributed to 134,279 rural schools in 30 out of the Chinese mainland’s 31 provincial regions.

In addition, another 30bil yuan has been funnelled into building canteens.

Zhang Yong, head of Gejiu Education Bureau, said, “Among all the rural primary schools and middle schools in Gejiu, 22 schools have set up their own canteens to provide nutritional meals and another 136 schools receive meals served by food companies.”

Gejia Primary School is one of the institutions which provide nutri- tional meals by the canteens.

To ensure openness of the progress, Zhang Yongming said that he releases the list of income and expenses of nutrition meal every month at school and also the list of every child who receives the food.

According to Zhang Yong, the improvement in students’ spirit and physical fitness is obvious now.

“The pass rate of students’ physical health tests reached 94.79% in 2015 in Gejiu’s rural schools, up from 92.65% in 2014,” he said, adding that “the malnutrition rate has reduced to 16.23% in 2015, down from 26.17% in 2011.”

What’s more, the students’ academic performance and attendance rate both increased alongside their nutrition, Zhang Yong said, adding that the dropout rates of students have reduced both in rural primary and middle schools in Gejiu in 2015. — China Daily/Asia News Network