Abstract:
The School Lunch Program (SLP) has been considered as an important contributor to children’s health outcomes as well as to improve education access and completion particularly for those who are from low socio economic family. In Thailand, the program was initiated more than 30 years ago and it helped to reduce the number of children who were malnourish or underweight in nation wide. However, actual condition or system of the program is not regularly reviewed by expertise and evaluation study has begun only at recent year. This study was conducted to better understand the current school lunch practices among the public primary schools under the auspices of Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) and Ministry of Education (MOE). A total of 6 schools, 3 from BMA and 3 from MOE, were selected to compare the lunch schemes. Data was collected using qualitative method including direct observation and interviews. Information was categorized and the program contexts (input, process, and output) were compared between two types of schools. The secondary data was also used to analyze the quality of school lunch. The results show that the current SLP management and system are quite different between schools under BMA and MOE. Especially, the provision system of the school lunch is less regulated at MOE schools while all BMA schools are providing meals in consistent manner. Preparing a school lunch containing adequate energy and nutrients seem to be still challenging for most of the schools under BMA and MOE. The amount of vegetable and fruit served in the lunch were remarkably less than recommended portions at both schools. This suggests the need of creating a support system to help schools provide healthy well-balanced meal in practical way. The common difficulties that many schools encountering nowadays were students’ preferring to eat Western type fast food, lack of parental support, and an increase in food price
