Ministry of Education: Free Nutritious Meals Programme Improves Student Focus
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (Kemendikdasmen) has said that the Free Nutritious Meals (MBG) programme is showing positive results in reducing hunger-related concentration difficulties, thereby improving students’ learning focus.
Based on the results of an evaluation of the implementation of the Seven Habits of Great Indonesian Children (KAIH) programme in Central Jakarta on Wednesday, schools receiving MBG recorded an average reduction in hunger-related learning disruptions 2.37 percentage points greater than schools that had not yet received the programme.
The evaluation was conducted from the baseline phase (May–June 2025) through to the endline phase (November–December 2025), involving approximately 1.2 million student respondents nationwide.
In eastern Indonesia, the reduction in hunger-related learning disruptions at MBG-recipient schools was recorded at 14.85 percentage points greater than at schools that had not yet implemented the programme.
These results indicate that nutritional intervention through MBG not only meets students’ basic needs but also strengthens their readiness to engage in learning.
Furthermore, the data provides strong evidence that for children in eastern Indonesia, the MBG programme is a crucial key to eliminating inequality, ensuring they can study with the same focus and opportunities as children in other regions.
In line with these findings, Minister of Basic and Secondary Education Abdul Mu’ti affirmed that MBG forms part of a long-term human development strategy.
“The MBG programme launched by President Prabowo Subianto is a long-term investment in Indonesian human development. We are preparing the 2045 generation — those who today are still in early childhood education, primary school, junior secondary school, senior secondary school, and even those still in the womb — to grow up healthy, intelligent, and strong both physically and mentally,” he said.
Head of the Centre for Character Strengthening, Rusprita Putri Utami, explained that respondent selection was carried out using a systematic sampling approach to ensure the evaluation results were representative of actual conditions.
“We randomly selected MBG-implementing schools, ensuring they had adequate baseline and endline data. We then matched them with schools that had not yet implemented MBG, with comparable education levels, regions, and student numbers, so that initial data conditions were nearly identical and could be compared,” she said.