Children who eat square meals perform better in school, new study shows
Children who take breakfast, lunch and supper perform better than those who do not take regular meals.
This is according to a recent study by the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC) that gave a breakdown of children’s performance in comparison to taking regular meals.
“Pupils who had three meals had better scores in Mathematics, English and Kiswahili by 47.4, 33.5 and 30.8 respectively, than those who had a single meal. Marsabit is one of the counties with a high percentage of pupils reporting not to take breakfast (31.8%) and supper (32.5%),” stated the report in part.
The research was done in 247 schools across the country involving 5,522 Class 3 pupils as the sample.
ORPHANED
Arid and semi-arid areas also recorded the highest percentage of over-age pupils with Garissa leading at 98.3 per cent followed by Turkana 90 per cent and Kwale 79.9 per cent.
“Older pupils’ scores in Mathematics, English and Kiswahili were lower by 3.0, 7.8 and 8.5 respectively than those of younger pupils,” stated the KNEC report.
Boys outperformed girls in Mathematics while the girls shone in English and Kiswahili languages.
Turkana County recorded the highest number of orphans, with those orphaned through death of father at 19.5% and death of mother at 10.5%.
BASIC FACILITIES
“Orphans scored lower in Mathematics, English and Kiswahili by 4.5, 8.1 and 5.0 respectively, than those who were not orphaned,” stated the report in part.
Despite the recent efforts by the government to equip pupils with tablets, only 31.9 per cent of pupils had been exposed to computers/laptops/tablets.
A high percentage of the sampled schools had basic facilities and amenities such as classrooms, play grounds and latrines/toilets.
“However, was a high percentage (88.6%) of unavailability of adapted latrines/toilets and fire extinguishers (86.4%),” stated the report.
