An appraisal of the impact of school feeding program on retention of primary school pupils in Katsina state, Nigeria

The study investigated the impact of school feeding programme on primary school pupils’ enrolment, retention and motivation. The study was guided by three objectives from which three research questions converted to three null hypotheses were generated and analyzed. A simple random sampling technique was used to select 333 participants (313 teachers, 10 Head teachers and 10 parents) from the total population of 2,582. A four-point Likert scaled Impact of School feeding on enrolment, motivation and retention of Pupils Questionnaire (ISFEMRPQ). Split-half method was used to establish the reliability of the instrument which yielded reliability co-efficient of section A (r = 0.809), section B (r =0.703) and Section C (r = 0.810) for the three (3) sections of the questionnaire. The research questions were answered using frequency count and percentage while the hypotheses were tested using Mann-Whitney u-test and chi-square test at 0.05level of significance. Results of the study revealed that, , there is significant impact of the School Feeding Programme and Retention of Primary School Pupils in Katsina Local Education Authority with p-value of 0.000. Based on these findings, it was concluded that, pupils’ retention significantly improve due to the impact of school feeding programme in Katsina Local Education Authority Katsina State Nigeria. Based on the findings it was recommended among others that, School feeding programme should be sustained in all the public primary schools in Katsina Local Education Authority. The study also recommended that efforts should also be intensified in the continuation of the school feeding programme to motivate pupil’s participation and facilitate pupils’ enrolment in public primary schools in Katsina State, Nigeria.