The Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) recently announced that private schools should also start implementing the school feeding policy, which is currently being implemented in all public and government aided schools.

The announcement was made during the launch of the school-feeding week in Kicukiro District.

By implication, government says that every school-going child must be able to take their lunch-time meal from school.

In an interview with The New Times, Divine Uwineza, the director of school feeding at MINEDUC said that the program’s benefits are beyond the type of food or social categories of the children.

"The importance of this initiative is far beyond just implementing a policy…it has a lot to do with children’s daily life at school than eating a similar meal,” she said.

Uwineza further explains that this helps in the socialisation of children while at the same time reducing daily commutes for lunch breaks among other benefits.

In addition, she said that the policy came to minimize all challenges which can affect the students’ performance in general, and not to feed the poor students as some might interpret.

"That’s the main reason we are encouraging the private schools to implement this policy as well”

Commenting on some concerns such as the foreigner’s students in private schools and other cases where the children live close to their schools among other issues.

Uwineza, revealed that there are always exceptional cases even in public schools they have some unique cases, and on those living near the schools she said the issue might not be the journey but the sociability part.

"Various schools have decreased the break time and sometimes it’s hard for the students to have their time together,” she said

For the schools where the children bring their own food at some point, it has a negative impact on the learners, she added.

She allayed fears that children may be forced to eat food they do not want or which is alien to them especially foreign students, saying that implementation will be systematic and will be guided by prevailing circumstances.

"With this programme, there is always a school feeding committee which includes parents, students, and head-teachers…they decide the student’s menu according to available funds as well as the location of the school,” she noted.

Currently, the government provides Rwf56 per day as support for each student to get food at school, while the parent contributes Rwf94 towards every meal to students in public and the government-aided secondary schools and primary schools

However, the government will not offer any subsidies towards private schools.

Faustin Abdon Nkotanyi, the secretary-general of a national syndicate of teachers in private schools, said that they fully support this policy though not all schools have embraced it.

"This will contribute a lot in the life of students through bonding while sharing lunch, discuss among them without the supervision of their teachers and share different experiences as well as learn different things from their school mates,” he explained.

Speaking on the likely increase of school fees due to the implementation of this policy, he said that he did not think it would be much burden to parents especially if the additional contribution goes towards what benefits their children.

"Some parents pay the transport for their children to go home for lunch and get back to school…it is easier for them to contribute that money towards this policy instead of paying it for transport among other reasons which can motivate them to do so,” he said.

In addition, he said that as a private teachers’ union, they strive for quality education and so far their students’ performance is good and they support anything that can increase or strengthen it.

Theoneste Turatsinze, a Director at Excella School, said that they are okay with it and they are ready to adhere to it where it will be necessary but for now they are flexible with any type of lunch according to parents’ choice.

Speaking to The New Times, Delphine Umuhoza, a mother who has a child in a private school, said the initiative is good but not suitable for all education levels.

"My son is in primary one at École Privée Marie Auxiliatrice. He usually takes lunch home due to different reasons and I have to follow his meal on a daily basis which is impossible with the implementation policy,” she said adding that "the policy itself is okay but the idea of scaling it up to the primary and pre-primary level was not good,” she said.

Umuhoza further said that the sociability part can be done through other ways such as increasing break time among other activities instead of this policy to Primary and pre-primary students

According to numbers from MINEDUC, over 3,500,000 students have access to the school feeding programme since it was extended to high school following its successful roll out in public primary schools.