Measuring for impact: a framework for school meal programmes

By Minh Phuong La, Simone Lombardini, and Cox Bogaards

School meal programmes are a lifeline for children worldwide, addressing not only hunger, but also promoting school attendance, learning, and well-being. Increasingly, these programmes are seen as catalysts for local economic development, especially when built on home-grown, locally procured food models.

But how do we measure their multifaceted impacts?

In 2021, WFP launched a portfolio of rigorous impact evaluations on school meal programmes tackling important questions on how they impact children’s education and nutrition, employment, local economies, and school meal modalities.

Since then, WFP’s Office of Evaluation in partnership with the World Bank started conducting experimental impact evaluations in The Gambia, Jordan, Burundi, Guatemala, Malawi, and Madagascar.

Building on this experience, we also developed measurement guidelines that serve as a valuable resource for those evaluating or implementing school feeding programmes.

While measurement tools are expected to evolve and improve over time, this document presents those used in the initial round of impact evaluations and provides a reference to the corresponding literature.

What are the measurement guidelines’ goals?

• Promote consistent use of indicators and measurement tools within the school-based programme impact evaluation window to allow meta-analysis, synthesis, and comparison across evaluations. It’s crucial to compare and synthesize results across programmes and contexts, moving beyond evidence tied to a specific context at a specific time, and instead responding to generalizable insights that support global evidence needs and inform national decision-making.
• Align the window’s measurement tools with WFP’s corporate results framework. This is important as many of the WFP Office of Evaluation’s ongoing impact evaluations are co-funded by WFP country offices’ monitoring and evaluation budgets and contribute to the generation of quality data.
• Guide evaluation teams in ensuring that each evaluation in the window meets and upholds ethical standards. The document provides a set of guidelines, checklists, and best practices to ensure ethical and safe data collection, particularly when working with vulnerable groups such as children.
• Provide a curated set of measurement indicators and tools for researchers and practitioners working on school feeding interventions, offering a “menu of choice” that can be tailored to diverse evaluation and research needs.

What domains are covered?

The indicators and tools in the framework are organized across a broad range of outcome domains that school meal programmes may influence, spanning multiple levels – from individual children and their households to workers or farmers and their households involved in the supply chain, as well as schools, farmer cooperatives, and markets.

These domains include health and nutrition, human capital development (with a focus on education and learning), gender, social protection, and social cohesion.

For programmes involving local food procurement, additional outcomes related to the local economy (such as farmer and worker incomes, market access, and agricultural practices) are also considered.

When comparing different school meal procurement models, indicators related to implementation (such as meal quality, quantity, and procurement efficiency) are often included, recognizing their influence on programme outcomes.

The framework also provides recommendations on appropriate data sources, including administrative records and monitoring data, a variety of surveys (for example, child-, household-, and cooperative-level), and other data collection methods.

Ethical considerations are embedded, with particular attention to protecting school-aged children during data collection – highlighting best practices around informed consent, privacy, and minimizing potential risks to participants.

While tools and methods will continue to evolve, this framework is intended to serve as a meaningful contribution to evaluation and research that inform policy and strengthen the design and delivery of school meal programmes worldwide.

Read the Measurement guidelines here.