These guidelines provide practical direction on school meals and costing; procurement and food management; meal preparation and serving; monitoring and reporting; and school feeding management at school, district, and national levels. As a living document, they outline standards and best practices while allowing flexibility in implementation. The 2025 edition of the School Feeding Operational Guidelines incorporates recent improvements in procurement processes, enhanced food safety and quality measures, and strengthened alignment with NST2 and ESSP 2024–2029. The Operational Guidelines are structured following a clear logic: Section 1 explains the background for the Guidelines. Section 2 explains what a healthy and safe school meal is in general, and what it should be composed of in Rwanda. Section 3 details the planning, budgeting, and procurement of school feeding items. These entail planning and budgeting processes, flow of funds from both government and parents’ contribution, food procurement, inspection and reception of food and non-food items and requirements for storerooms. Section 4 explains food management at school including inspection of food quality and safety and proper use of storerooms. The section goes into details on how to ensure that the required food is in the store at the right time and in sufficient quantity. Section 5 on meal preparation explains how a safe and healthy meal is prepared and served (cooks’ readiness, requirements for kitchen environment and safe water, taking safe food out of the store, preparing meals, preparation of schoolchildren, serving meals, eating meals, and properly cleaning up). Section 6 explains how the programme will ensure the transparent and accountable use of its resources, how it will measure and report on its results, and how it will share these results for discussion and learning among all parties with an interest in the programme. Section 7 explains the entire governance structure of the programme, including multi sectoral coordination, decision-making bodies at different levels, the implementing actors, and their respective tasks. In several sections, specific tools are provided to be used by the relevant actors. These tools, such as forms, templates and checklists are attached as annexes to these guidelines and will form part of the training to be provided.