Children may be missing out on free school meals as families favour private education, study finds

Children in some of India's poorest families may be missing out on free school meals because the scheme does not match parents’ aspirations for their futures, new research has revealed.

The study into the world’s largest school feeding programme, India’s Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDMS), found that free school meals remain a vital source of support, particularly for families experiencing acute hardship. But, it found, their value cannot be understood through nutrition and school attendance alone, and the scheme must be reframed if it is to be taken up more widely.

The study, by the Food Security for Equitable Futures research team at Lancaster University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, found the scheme’s ability to reach and support children is shaped by factors extending well beyond the meal itself, including perceptions of school quality, the costs of schooling, household labour needs, and the social meanings attached to receiving free food.

Introduced three decades ago, the MDMS provides free cooked meals to around 118 million children with the aim of both improving nutrition and encouraging school attendance. It is widely regarded as one of India’s most successful food programmes. But the meals are only available in government and government-aided schools, so families’ decisions about the scheme are bound up with decisions about where to educate their children.

The study, funded by UK Research and Innovation and published in the Journal of Social Policy, draws on interviews with 246 members of 60 low-income households in Uttar Pradesh and Goa. It found that families judged the scheme less on its nutritional value than on how it fitted their aspirations for their children. Many opted for low-cost private schools they saw as offering a better education, trading free meals for private education. Often, this also involved cutting back on food at home to pay the fees, worsening food budget pressures.

For others, relying on school meals carried stigma, shaped by caste, class, gender and religion, and by expectations that parents should feed their own children. Some children felt ashamed to queue for food or ask for more. For the poorest households, a free meal was often outweighed by the need for children’s labour or by hidden costs such as transport.

Dr Swayamshree Mishra, lead author of the study from Lancaster University’s School of Social Sciences, said: “The Mid-day Meal Scheme is one of India’s most important welfare programmes, and for families in the most difficult circumstances it is a lifeline. But families don’t see school meals simply as nutrition. They weigh them against their hopes for their children’s education, their sense of dignity and the pressures of everyday life. If the scheme is to reach more children, it needs to speak to those concerns too.”

The research team calls for a reorientation of the scheme that goes beyond improving meal quality: better infrastructure in government schools, framing and messaging that reduce stigma, community co-design of menus, reducing hidden costs such as transport, and highlighting how the scheme eases the daily care burden on working mothers.

The findings have relevance beyond India, highlighting the importance of considering how families experience and interpret school food provision when designing and evaluating school meal programmes.

The article, “Food, education and aspirations: Perceptions and experiences of India’s Mid-day Meal Scheme” is published in the Journal of Social Policy, DOI: 10.1017/S0047279426101706.