Pretoria – Western Cape Education MEC Donald Grant has announced that the provincial department will this year expand its school nutrition programme to include an additional breakfast meal.
This follows the department’s recent budget speech, where Grant announced that this year, all feeding scheme schools will begin serving breakfast to learners, in addition to the lunches they already receive.
This morning Grant helped to serve porridge to learners at Academia Primary School in Eerste River, and had an opportunity to interact with learners.
“Learners will begin to receive their breakfast meal, served five days a week, before the start of school each day. This will not only provide more nutrition for our learners, but will encourage our learners to arrive early for school,” said Grant.
Currently, over 430 000 learners in 1 022 schools in the province receive lunch every day. This includes all Quintile 1-3 schools and 311 Quintile 4 and 5 schools serving learners in poorer communities.
In 2009, 334 287 learners were part of the school feeding scheme and in the last few years, the scheme has expanded to include nearly 100 000 more learners.
Grant said funding for school feeding had also expanded significantly, with allocations to the feeding scheme having more than doubled since 2009/2010, increasing from R112 million to R260 million in 2013/2014.
“The increased budget does not only allow for the additional learners but also provides for a more nutritious meal being served to our learners, placing specific emphasis on healthy foods.
“The nutritional value of the meals has increased since 2011 by the inclusion of fresh fruit and vegetables, tinned fish and lentils. It also provides for cooked, hot meals being served five days a week. 2 828 volunteers assist our schools in preparing and serving the food,” Grant said. – SAnews.gov.za
