Beans Means Brains is a project run by Sustainable Communities Network (UK) Charity No. 1109945
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A school lunch programme to improve the education, health and life chances of Ugandan children
Achievements
The first lunch was served in March 2006, towards the end of the first term of the school year. Within a week or two teachers and parents were commenting that the children had more energy. Great news.
Over the rest of the school year, attendance was up with hardly any children absent in the afternoons.
Teachers get lunch too and now sit together to eat. Previously some of them had taken it in turns to cook, which invariably meant leaving a class unattended for a while. They say that they use lunchtime to discuss school issues with each other and that it has improved their working together.
As ever in education the real test was to see whether having lunch improved academic achievement. The Primary Leaving Exam is sat by all Primary 7 pupils at the end of the school year (December). The results were awaited even more anxiously than usual and it was hugely rewarding for everyone to see an improvement in the results right across the board.
The table shows the difference in results between 2005 and 2006. Grade 1 is the top grade - like an “A” grade in the UK and results are aggregated across all subjects.
Everyone was delighted to see two students achieve Grade 1 - unusual for a rural school. It was just as pleasing to see an improvement in the standards overall - all students achieved Grade 3 or above in the first year of the lunch programme.