DepEd eyes expanding feeding program to full school year

The Department of Education (DepEd) has proposed more than doubling the budget for the school-based feeding program (SBFP) to cover an entire school year or 220 feeding days, an official said Wednesday.

During the hearing of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, DepEd Assistant Secretary Francis Cesar Bringas said the proposed funding for SBFP under the 2024 National Expenditure Program (NEP) is P11 billion, from the previous P5 billion.

“This was a 105% increase which is attributed to the increase in the number of feeding days from 120 to 220 days, covering the entire school year,” he said.

Bringas explained that the DepEd has found out amid the implementation of the SBFP that school children tend to revert to malnutrition status if they are only being fed for 120 days.

“We also have to consider again the two-month vacation. After they have left school, they go back to their homes and when they come back, there's a high probability that they are again back to the old status. Year in, year out, we have the same recipients in the SBFP because of the reversion during the summer break,” he added.

The SBFP is one of the three national feeding programs for undernourished children under RA 11037 or the Masustansyang Pagkain Para sa Batang Pilipino Act, the others being the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Supplemental Feeding Program for Children in Public Day Care Centers and the Department of Agriculture’s Milk Feeding Program.

Under the SBFP, undernourished children from kindergarten to Grade 6 are given deworming tablets and fed at least one fortified meal and micronutrient doses in pills, capsules, or syrups for at least 120 days in a school year.

School children who are covered under the program are those mostly “wasted and severely wasted,” or those who are considered too skinny for their age.

According to Bringas, DepEd wants to expand the nutrition food product component to 220 feeding days and the milk component to 47 to 55 days.

He, however, noted several problems in the implementation of the milk component of the SBFP as the law mandates that the milk given to school children should be fresh.

“Our experience in the past years, hindi lahat all over the country nasu-suplayan ng fresh milk and even if they are supplied with fresh milk, ‘yung shelf life ng fresh milk ang nagiging issue. Some are spoiled, wala tayong storage facility, we don’t have cooling facilities that would increase their shelf life,” he added.

(Not all places in the country are being supplied with fresh milk, and even if they are, it is the shelf life of fresh milk that becomes the issue. Some become spoiled because we don't have storage facilities or cooling facilities that would increase their shelf life.)

Senate basic education committee chairman Sherwin Gatchalian, meanwhile, stressed that nutritional issues among children affect their cognitive and learning abilities.

“The beauty of the feeding program in schools is they are in the government system. If they are outside of the government system, it’s very hard to reach them and feed them. But since they are inside, it becomes our responsibility to address the nutritional issues of our learners,” he said.

Gatchalian presented Department of Science and Technology- Food and Nutrition Research Institute data in 2021 which showed that 20 percent of children aged six to 10 are stunted or "bansot," 21 percent are considered underweight, and seven percent are considered wasted or malnourished.

The senator said that the 20 percent represents about 2.8 million children, while seven percent represents about a million children.

“If we will look at the data for the nation it is quite concerning…That’s quite a significant number and a concerning number…We all know that a hungry child will not learn. That’s impossible and a lot of these issues happen during the early childhood days,” he said.

“Some of them are quite difficult to repair when they enter our kindergarten and primary schools but then again, we need to do this intervention to prevent further regression and further damage in their bodies and in their health,” he added.

For School Year 2023-2024, Bringas said that DepEd is targeting around 1.6 million learners from Kindergarten to Grade 6 as beneficiaries of the SBFP.

The opening of classes for the upcoming academic year will be on August 29 for all public schools nationwide. — with Hana Bordey/BM, GMA Integrated News