THE Ministry of Education is giving thought to making budgetary provisions for a breakfast programme in primary and all-age schools where some students currently have to go without that crucial first meal of the day, given their low socio-economic status.

“It is something that we have been discussing and it is something that we are considering making (provisions) for in the budget for next year,” Audrey Sewell, former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education who was recently transferred to the Ministry of Transport and Works, told Career & Education in November.

“But we don’t know to what extent it can be accommodated given the constraints we are on,” she added.

Still, Sewell said that the ministry had been lending support to the breakfast programmes now in operation at some schools whose administrations have been “creative” in their use of resources.

“Some people have been very creative. Some have been able to use what we give them for the cooked lunch component (of the School Feeding Programme) for that area as well,” she noted.

The Ministry of Education currently spends hundreds of millions on the school-feeding programme to which there are two components — a cooked lunch component and a dry goods component.

The cooked lunch component is administered directly by the ministry, which purchases and distributes food stuff for the preparation of hot meals in the schools to the tune of some $264.679 million this year. The dry goods component is administered by Nutrition Products Limited (NPL) — currently divested to facilitate improved efficiency — which provides nutribun and milk products. Government has invested $709.486 million in NPL this budget year.

Sewell’s revelations came on the heels of concerns raised by some principals about the need for a comprehensive school breakfast programme.

“A number of our kids come to school with a cheese trix or some little juice; things that really are not of any nutritional value and they come early in the morning with that as breakfast and some even come without,” Owen Speid, principal of Port Royal Primary ad Infant school, told Career & Education in November.

The result, he said, was that such children were often less than alert.

“It is almost irresponsible of any humane adult to ask children to come to school without a meal and still perform,” Speid noted at the time.

President of the National Parent-Teacher Association Marcia McCausland-Wilson herself expressed concern at the time for children who attend school without having had breakfast.

“We are really concerned. I know that our schools are trying; our principals (and) the (overall) administration of the schools are really trying. The PTA is trying, but right now, we need to ramp this up,” she said.

As such, she said they have been working with a number of schools to solicit support from corporate Jamaica to have breakfast programmes implemented.