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POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1337600
This article is part of the Research Topic How School Health and Nutrition Interventions are Reshaping the Global Public Health Narrative View all 5 articles

The SABER School Feeding Policy Tool: a Ten-Year Analysis of its Use by Countries in Developing Policies for their National School Meals Programs

Provisionally accepted
Linda Schultz Linda Schultz 1,2*Alice Renaud Alice Renaud 3Donald A. Bundy Donald A. Bundy 1,2Fatoumata B. Barry Fatoumata B. Barry 4Luis Benveniste Luis Benveniste 4Carmen Burbano De Lara Carmen Burbano De Lara 5Mouhamadou M. Lo Mouhamadou M. Lo 6Jutta Neitzel Jutta Neitzel 5Niamh O'Grady Niamh O'Grady 5Lesley Drake Lesley Drake 7
  • 1 Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, London, United Kingdom
  • 2 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, London, United Kingdom
  • 3 World Bank Group, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 4 World Bank Group, Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States
  • 5 World Food Programme, Rome, Lazio, Italy
  • 6 World Bank Group, Yaounde, Cameroon
  • 7 Imperial College London, London, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Since its launch in 2011, 59 governments have used the World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) policy tool to design their national school-based health and nutrition programs. This tool guides governments to self-evaluate their education system policies against international benchmarks and identify actionable priorities to strengthen national programs. 32 of the 49 countries in sub-Saharan Africa (65%) have undertaken a SABER review, and globally the approach has been adopted by 68% of the world's low-income countries and 54% of lower-middle-income countries. Analysis of 51 comparable SABER School Feeding surveys suggests that countries with longer established national school meals frameworks tend also to be more advanced in other policy areas, and vice versa. The SABER reviews consistently identify, perhaps predictably, that the weakest policy areas relate to program design, implementation and fiscal space. This analysis also found that the tool had an additional value in tracking the evolution of policies when implemented over several time points, and showed that policy areas become more advanced as national programs mature. These benefits of the tool are particularly relevant to the 97 countries that co-created the global School Meals Coalition in 2021. The Coalition member countries have the specific goal of enhancing coverage and support for the well-being of schoolchildren and adolescents affected by the school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SABER tool has the demonstrated potential to implement, accelerate and track changes in school meals policy and, since it has been previously used by 74% (31/42) of lowand lower-middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, is an already accepted element of the political economies of those countries and so has the potential to be deployed rapidly.

    Keywords: Saber, school feeding, School Meals Coalition, Human Capital, Education policy

    Received: 13 Nov 2023; Accepted: 03 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Schultz, Renaud, Bundy, Barry, Benveniste, Burbano De Lara, Lo, Neitzel, O'Grady and Drake. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Linda Schultz, Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition, London, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.