This policy brief has been prepared by the Sustainable Finance Initiative (SFI) of the School Meals Coalition – a partnership between governments, UN agencies, NGOs, and research institutions aimed at expanding the reach and strengthening the quality of school feeding programmes.

Despite the importance of nutrition during middle childhood (5–9 years) and adolescence (10–19 years) for the health and well-being of current and future generations, the 5–19-year period remains relatively neglected in research, policy and programming agendas.

The prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care.

School health and nutrition programmes are among the most widely implemented public policies in the world.

Report Card 17 explores how 43 OECD/EU countries are faring in providing healthy environments for children. Do children have clean water to drink? Do they have good-quality air to breathe? Are their homes free of lead and mould? How many children live in overcrowded homes?

The authors examine the mutual reinforcement of adolescent health and education, the challenges of intersectoral working, and the joint investment needed to secure wellbeing during adolescence, into adult life, and for the next generation.

In this article, the authors argue that school health programmes have the potential to mitigate a growing epidemic of malnutrition in children and adolescents.

Poor diets and malnutrition in all its forms are among the greatest global social challenges of our time. The Nutrition Year of Action spotlighted the urgent need for more action whilst ensuring that all stakeholders are held accountable for their commitments.

Peer education is an approach growing in popularity across school contexts, possibly due to adolescents preferring to seek help for health-related concerns from their peers rather than adults or professionals.

This is an invited memo prepared for the Spring 2022 Meeting of the Global Education Forum. It addresses the importance of the condition of children as a determinant of education outcomes, and specifically the role of school meals in addressing the well-being and learning of schoolchildren.