ESTIMATED READING TIME: 3 MINUTES
By Kate Linkins, Advocacy and Partnerships Officer, Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, UNESCO
School meals programmes remain one of the most immediate and effective ways proven to improve both access to education and learning outcomes - yet millions of school-age children are still not reached. At a time when countries are striving to recover learning losses and reach the most disadvantaged, the 2026 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report recently launched in Paris highlights school meals as a critical lever for equity in education that demands renewed attention and investment.
School meals address a foundational barrier: Hunger
Hunger is a persistent obstacle to attendance and learning. For children in low-income households, the guarantee of a daily meal can determine whether they attend school at all.
Yet, beyond improving attendance, better nutrition also supports concentration, health and overall learning, making school meals a powerful bridge between social protection and education outcomes.
What the evidence shows
According to the latest 2026 GEM Report and building on its recent publication, Learn to Eat Well, school feeding drives school enrolment, in-class retention and long-term health and productivity. Few interventions offer such a clear, cross-sectoral impact.
The GEM report’s case studies illustrate the diversity of effective school meal approaches. For example, targeted approaches in Ghana benefit girls and marginalized groups; China focuses support reaching disadvantaged learners despite lower food insecurity; and Bolivia, Guatemala and Tanzania all piloted innovative domestic financing mechanisms to fund their school meal programmes.
A particularly compelling example is Rwanda, where aligning school meals with national education priorities delivers measurable results at scale. This demonstrates how government commitment to the phased expansion of school meal programmes significantly increases student participation in basic education, especially in underserved communities.
Global trends: High policy adoption, low coverage
A global review of national policies and programmes accompanies the report, linked in the GEM Report’s Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews (PEER) platform* and shows that 84% of countries have school meal programmes. However, prevalence varies significantly by region, and crucially, fewer than one in three primary school children globally receive free or subsidized school meals. This gap between policy adoption and actual programme reach highlights a persistent equity challenge.
Financing: The central constraint
While ministries of education fund the majority of programmes worldwide, efforts to prioritize the most disadvantaged learners are often insufficient. The GEM Report’s new Equitable Financing Index shows that fewer than one in ten countries allocate finance in ways that strongly target equity. Where funding is unstable or reliant on external support, programmes struggle to expand and sustain impact, especially in fragile and vulnerable contexts where school meals are most needed but hardest to sustain.
Encouragingly, some countries are demonstrating promising pathways forward through innovation and commitment, for example, through earmarked taxes, blended financing or integration into national education budgets.
A clear call to action
The 2026 GEM Report does not leave room for ambiguity: while most countries have school meal programmes, many children worldwide are still left behind. Expanding equitable access to school meals is not just about nutrition, it is about ensuring every child has a fair chance to learn, thrive and succeed. Closing that gap is a political choice, and evidence demonstrates that governments prioritizing investments are seeing results in classrooms and beyond. The full findings, including national policy profiles, are can be found on the 2026 GEM Report and the PEER platform.
More about the author Kate Linkins
*A global review of national policies and programmes accompanies the report, linked in the GEM Report’s Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews (PEER) platform* and informed mainly by the World Food Programme, the Global Child Nutrition Foundation and national reports.
