Minister of National Education Mahmut Özer said in a written statement on Monday that they were working to include a total of 5 million students into the free lunch scheme, starting the second semester, which will begin in February.

Türkiye already supplies free meals to students in grade schools who have to travel a long distance from home to attend school and students at boarding schools. The scheme was earlier limited only to students who cannot afford meals but Özer said earlier that all students would be entitled to free lunches soon.

The country has signed a protocol with the World Food Programme (WFP) for meals and ran a feasibility study for the practice, before implementing it in areas where disadvantaged communities are concentrated. Özer had announced earlier that all preschoolers would be supplied free lunches starting on Feb. 6, 2023.

This year, some 1.5 million students benefited from free meals at the beginning of the school year and it was expanded to 1.8 million in the following months. "We are planning to take a concrete step for equality in opportunities in education," Özer said in his statement.

The government also decided to end the flexibility in rents for canteens at schools, operated by private enterprises, in a bid to facilitate access to food at school premises for students and staff.

Özer said their efforts ultimately aimed to curb dropouts due to a number of factors, from economic to social, and noted that they were the result of a set of recommendations at last year’s Education Council, a landmark convention of educators.

Earlier this year, the ministry collaborated with the European Union to implement a project to increase the schooling rate in the country. With the help of the "Technical Support Project to Increase Continuity of the Secondary School and Schooling Rate," or ODAP, students at high risk of dropping out of school can be detected earlier. In addition, the "prevention, intervention and recovery" integration model will be applied to help these students. Authorities say that Türkiye's schooling rate at every level of education is close to the average levels of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The project will be completed in June 2024 and will be applied to 50 schools in 14 provinces.

Also, an innovative software program will be written for the "Early Warning System" to detect students at high risk of dropping out and inform officials. The "prevention, intervention and recovery" integration model will be applied to these high-risk students. Besides the integration model and "Early Warning System" software, recovery lessons will be provided for students to catch up on basic skills in the fields of comprehension, mathematics and science. In addition, educational activities including arts, music and drama will be developed to increase students’ motivation. Training will be provided to schools in the framework of the project and support will be provided in terms of equipment. An adviser (mentorship) guideline will be distributed to the teachers.

The WFP says every day, millions of children around the world go to school hungry and spend the day on an empty stomach, something that affects their concentration and ability to learn. The international body is working with countries to set up sustainable national school feeding programs. In 2020 alone, some 15 million children around the world received meals and snacks courtesy of the WFP. The WFP says school feeding programs have a broad range of benefits, primarily discouraging dropping out of school and relieving parents from spending on lunches, especially in low-income communities. "School meals represent 10% of the income of poor and vulnerable households, a significant saving for families with more than one child," the WFP said. It also added that some 73 million children in the world living in extreme poverty in 60 countries need urgent nutritional assistance.