Examining students satisfaction with school meals under the free shs policy

Abstract

It has been acknowledged from numerous studies that students who consume nutritious meals before taking an academic task are more effective in increasing their cognitive performance and enhanced examination achievement. No study has taken into consideration different categorization of schools (specifically senior high schools) in order to see the similarities and difference in meals serve at different schools and the factors that account for. The main purpose of this study was to investigate students’ satisfaction with school meals under the Free SHS policy. Stratified sampling was used to categorized the schools into A and B. Subsequently purposive sampling was used to select 404 respondants from the category “A” and “B” schools . Interviews and questionnaire were used to collect data and analysed with SSPS version 23. In the process of finding out specific meals served at the selected schools, it astonishingly emerged that all the schools use the same menu for breakfast, lunch and supper. On quantity of meals served the following was recorded 84%, 67%, 60%, and 59% respectively from the schools. (Presec, legon,Ghanata, WASS and Aquinas) indicating their dissatisfaction of meals served at their dining halls. Five-point Likert Scale for quality was used to assess the sensory qualities (i.e. colour, taste, texture, and flavour) and quantity of meals served to students that is Very dissatified=1, dissatified=2, neutral/normal=3, satisfied=4, and very satisfied=5. Mean and standard deviation were used to estimate the average rating and the degree of variability for each property. Presec, Legon and Aquinas, recorded a mean of 3.63, 3.23, for colour, taste, texture, and flavour recorded 2.93, 3.23, 2.99 and 3.19, 3.15, and 3.02, respectively, can be approximated to 3 which signifies “fair”. In conclusion, meals served to students both in category A and B schools do not have any significant variation, hence depicting the fact that meals serve at various senior high schools are the same regardless of the pedigree.