Short Study

Boarding Schools

 

Once the cause of pride in the 70s and 80s, the Nigerian public secondary school system has suffered years of infrastructural neglect that worsened along with many other public service institutions during the years of so-called structural adjustment in the 1990s.

 

Children are as young as 10 years old when they first leave home for boarding school.  Unfortunately, built-in safety-net mechanisms for these children are no longer as robust as they once were.

 

Aside from the natural and expected challenges of circumspect hygiene for a 10 year old, perhaps the most significant concern is that the “mess hall” (military style) dining hall set up fails to ensure  that the youngest children do not go hungry when they have to implicitly or explicitly compete for their share of food with older children. 

 

One of our short studies is investigating correlations between boarding school status and growth index percentiles in pediatric-aged boarding school students.

 

 

 

Status: Data collection complete 12/2008.

 

Pediatric Nutrition

in

Boarding Schools

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