Stakeholders’ perceptions of the re-introduction of in-school feeding at Ankaful Psychiatric Nursing Training College

Abstract

The School Feeding Programme (SFP) has benefited pupils in the basic level of education worldwide. It served as safety nest to reduce hunger and reduce nutritional disorder. In the nursing training colleges in Ghana, SFP were adopted to ensure that trainee nurses are not unnecessarily hungry throughout the training period hence improve their cognitive functioning. However, after about 43 years into the programme, the Ankaful Psychiatric Nurses Training College (APNTC) suspended the school feeding programme. After about four years of suspension, the management is considering reintroducing the school feeding programme. This study examined the perception of stakeholders regarding the reintroduction of the school feeding at the APNTC. The study employed the descriptive survey design and drew samples from APNTC. Questionnaire was the main instrument used to gather data. The main findings of the study were that, students go through stress in cooking by themselves, students contract several ailments as a result of eating food outside the school and waste a lot of time on cooking. The study further revealed that reintroduction of school feeding will help reduce electricity bills as a result of the use of electrical appliance for cooking meals, school feeding will help improve on teaching and learning activities in the college. It was recommended that Management of the nursing training colleges should engage trainee nurses in the menu planning to enhance efficient implementation of the feeding programme and the policy makers should come out with a policy to standardize feeding in all nursing training colleges in the country, hence making school feeding formal and its usefulness to the trainee nurses clearly stated.