Evaluation Report of China’s National Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Students in Compulsory Education Released in Beijing

On May 20, 2013 which is the National Student Nutrition Day, CDRF releases the Evaluation Report of China’s National Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Students in Compulsory Education. Ms. Lu Xin, Vice Education Minister and Director of National Student Nutrition Office, and Mr. Zhang Laiming, Vice President of DRC，attend the launching ceremony, together with experts and scholars from CDC, China Renmin University, National Education Development Research Center of MOE, the World Bank and WFP.

Entrusted by the National Student Nutrition Office, CDRF initiates the impact evaluation of the National Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Students in Compulsory Education since October 2012. This is the first domestic large-scale public performance evaluation of major government project for people’s livelihood conducted by independent third-party. The evaluation results prove that rural students feel far less hungry at school after the Program is put into force. The Program changes their unhealthy eating habit that one takes only two meals every day. Over 13 million rural students in compulsory education can eat meat at school every day. The program succeeds in improving students’ physique and easing the stunting problem among rural poor students. The Report puts forward the following suggestions: to strengthen local governments’ awareness of how significant student nutrition improvement is, to increase the funding for kitchen construction, to accelerate the transformation of modes of school feeding, to strengthen overall standardization construction of rural schools in compulsory education, to put aside specific fund for the operational cost of the Program, to establish incentive mechanism for teachers, and to increase subsidy standard.