Jessica B. Soliman¹, Victor S. Soliman^2,, Ma. Jocelyn J. Paje², Myrna C. Pereyra³

School feeding (SF) has long been a welfare scheme adopted in the Philippines but there are very limited empirical studies that assessed its effectiveness. The nutrition-cognition nexus needs to be examined especially that regular SF program has been institutionalized recently by the government. From a set of socioeconomic factors and anthropometric measures, the present study determined which of them are significantly associated with the composite final grade of pupils. All recipients (N=80 malnourished primary schoolchildren were served lunch) of the “Busog-Lusog-Talino” (“Full-Healthy-Bright”) School Feeding Program in San Carlos Elementary School in southern Bicol (Philippines) for two school years were participants to the study. Pearson correlation analysis revealed that parents’ education and pupils’ concurrent body mass index (BMI) are positive explanatory factors correlated with the final grade. Differing from many studies where mother’s education had commonly been a dominant and only parent gender significant factor to pupils’ academic achievement, the study revealed that under circumstances of poor family economic status the education of fathers had higher association than mothers’. Concurrent BMI (i.e., measured while the school feeding was implemented) is significantly linked to pupils’ grades providing evidence for the need in sustaining good nutrition from school to the home. Schoolchildren under varying low levels of nutritional status and with low parents’ education are predisposed to low academic performance. Implications of the findings to improving school feeding monitoring were elucidated.

final grades, anthropometrics, socio-economic status, parent’s education