In Pakistan, school meals are the responsibility of provincial and regional governments, which have pledged to step-up school meals in their respective provinces: federal territories (Islamabad Capital Territory, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir) will expand school meals; Balochistan will extend its school meals programme to eight additional districts by 2030; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will scale up the girls’ stipend programme and pilot a school meals programme; Punjab will expand the School Milk Programme to 25% of districts in the coming financial years with the goal of eventual province-wide coverage, while Sindh will design and pilot a school meals programme and include it in the School Education Policy and Education Sector Plan 2025–2030.
- Develop a National School Meal Roadmap to establish a national programme with clear objectives, key stakeholders, and strategies, and integrate school meals into all federal and provincial education and nutrition policies and plans, with legal and budgetary provisions, in line with the National Education Policy Development Framework 2024.
- Incorporate school meals into the Prime Minister’s Education in Emergency initiative and its National Action Plan to help reach 25 million out-of-school children and improve learning outcomes.
- Mobilize innovative financing to enable nationwide scale-up.
- Strengthen capacity by training education departments across provinces and regions and establish a Federal–Interprovincial School Meal Coordination Mechanism.
