A Descriptive Study on Effectiveness of Mid-Day Meal Programme in Selected Government Primary School of Bhubaneswar, Odisha

The Mid-day Meal Scheme is the popular name for school meal programme in India.It involves provision of lunch free of cost to school-children on all working days. The key objectives of the programme are: protecting children from classroom hunger, increasing school enrolment and attendance, improved socialisation among children belonging to all castes, addressing malnutrition, and social empowerment through provision of employment to women. All most all the school have adequate facility for providing mid-day meal program, but some need special attention in building infrastructure and also to increase the man-power. Meal provided in mid meal almost satisfactory and students are satisfied with mid-day meal programme. A descriptive study on effectiveness of Mid-day meal programme in selected Govt. primary school of Bhubaneswar, Odisha was conducted at Bhubaneswar during the year 2011-2013.The objective of the study were To understand the infrastructure and institutional arrangements for Mid Day Meal scheme in the State and To assess the performance of Mid Day Meal Scheme in the State and To study the Impact of scheme on enrollment, attendance and nutritional status of children and also To find out the association between sociodemographic variable of students and success rate of mid-day programme. The literature was reviewed from research and non-research literature and conceptual framework was derived from is J.W. Kenny's open system model(1990).In order to accomplish the objectives, non-experimental descriptive approach and non-experimental survey design were adopted.The non probability convenience sampling technique was adopted to select the school , data was collected from the mid day meal in-charge and available teacher of the school and 10% total student of the school and also check for quality of the available food. Observational schedule and questionnaire were the tools developed for collection of data. The content validity of tools was established by 6 experts in the field of nursing and community medicine and statistics. Data obtained was analyzed in terms of objectives and by using both descriptive and inferential statistics. After analysis the present piece of study revealed that few school need adequate infrastructure to keep the raw material ,few school need separate cooking shed for cooking, few school have no facility veranda they take their lunch in open field, few teachers are not satisfied with the mid-day meal programme they feel burden as the no extra member is there to look over the mid-day meal program. Taste and smell of the food can be improved but the appearance and texture is appropriate. All the students are satisfied with mid-day program. and there is no significant association between students satisfaction level and the demographic variable. Based on finding it is recommended that, similar study can be replicated on larger samples in different settings to have a wider applicability by generalization, A similar study can be taken to find out teachers knowledge and their acceptability of MDM programme, A comparative study can be conducted to assess the MDM programme in rural and urban areas, A study can be conducted to assess the nurses knowledge regarding MDM programme, A study can be conducted on physiological effect of MDM on school going children, A study can be conducted on effect of MDM programme on learning in school going children.