Implementation of a Digital School Feeding Records System for Primary Schools in Katsina State

The National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme in Katsina State faces challenges in verifying meal delivery, tracking beneficiary attendance, and preventing fraudulent claims due to paper-based record-keeping. This study presents the development of a digital school feeding records system for government primary schools in Katsina State, North West Nigeria. The system was built using PHP and MySQL, with a tablet-based interface designed for use by school feeding caterers and teachers. Daily meal delivery is recorded with beneficiary count, food type, and photographic evidence of meal preparation. Automatic aggregation generates monthly feeding reports for LGA supervisors. The system was developed using Rapid Application Development over three iterative cycles, with eight school head teachers involved in requirement elicitation. Functional testing verified arithmetic aggregation, report generation, and image upload across 100 test scenarios. A three-month pilot in eight primary schools across Katsina North and Daura LGAs demonstrated that the system reduced monthly report compilation time by 74 percent compared to the manual process. Discrepancies between meal delivery records and pupil attendance data were identified in 6 percent of recorded delivery events, enabling targeted fraud investigations. The study recommends mandatory adoption across all schools enrolled in the programme in Katsina State and integration with the National Social Investment Office's national monitoring dashboard.

Keywords: school feeding records, digital management, Katsina State, primary schools, social intervention