‘A gamble on a child’s behalf’: thousands of pupils eat food from non-compliant school kitchens

Millions of children rely on South Africa’s school nutrition programme for daily meals, but thousands are being served food from kitchens that do not meet basic food safety standards.

With a fraction of school kitchens holding the legally required Certificate of Acceptability (COA), a food safety expert has issued a strong warning of the health hazards.

The scale of health and safety non-compliance uncovered in school kitchens amounts to government gambling with children’s health, a food safety expert has warned.

“This is not an administrative failure — it is the difference between a safe meal and a gamble taken on a child’s behalf, every school day, without their knowledge,” said Asanda Getyeza-Ntswam, a PhD candidate at the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape.

According to figures from parliament, thousands of children are eating meals prepared in school kitchens that do not meet basic food safety and hygiene standards, raising safety questions about the food served to some of the country’s most vulnerable learners.

As first reported by News24, only 1,616, or 18%, of the 8,889 public schools providing daily meals across six provinces have been issued with a COA, a requirement for establishments that handle, prepare, store or sell food.

A COA is issued after an environmental health officer has assessed an establishment and determined that it complies with regulation 638 of the department of health.

Without the certificate, there is no independent assurance that a school kitchen meets the required food safety standards.

The scale of the problem varies dramatically between provinces. Limpopo is the worst affected, with only 167 of the 3,472 schools participating in the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) having a COA. This amounts to less than 5% compliance.

In the Western Cape, 678 of 1,077 schools have certificates, compared with 262 of 1,675 schools in Gauteng, 255 of 758 in the Free State, 148 of 499 in the Northern Cape and 106 of 1,408 in the Eastern Cape.

Across the six provinces, thousands of schools continue to provide meals without the compliance certification.

The NSNP provides daily meals to about 78% of the 9.5-million learners at roughly 20,000 schools nationally. The programme has been allocated R10.3bn in the current financial year.

School nutrition programme (theoutlier.co.za) Getyeza-Ntswam said the consequences of failing to maintain food safety standards can be severe. “South Africa has already seen what that gamble can cost,” she said, referring to the deaths of more than 20 children in Gauteng in 2024 after they consumed snacks contaminated with terbufos, an illegal street pesticide.

“The lesson from Gauteng is not that spaza shops are uniquely dangerous; it is that food safety fails quietly, in ordinary places, until it does not.”

Under the NSNP’s centralised model, provincial departments tender and contract service providers to supply and deliver food while districts monitor deliveries.

The worst offender, Limpopo, has faced food safety problems before. In 2014, several major NSNP retailers had their contracts terminated after being implicated in food contamination that hospitalised learners. Their warehouses also failed the department’s own health standards.

Twelve years later, NSNP officials were sent to Ditlalemeso High School after four learners were hospitalised following a suspected food poisoning incident.

The lesson from Gauteng is not that spaza shops are uniquely dangerous; it is that food safety fails quietly, in ordinary places, until it does not.—  Asanda Getyeza-Ntswam, PhD candidate at the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape

Officials were dispatched to investigate the incident and assess food safety and handling procedures.

For Getyeza-Ntswam, the problem is not simply whether a supplier has won a tender. “The risk was never procurement in the abstract; it is oversight, temperature control of perishable and cooked food, and hygiene monitoring at every point where a supplier’s warehouse, vehicle, or delivery touches a school,” she said.

“Food safety is not a box a contract ticks once at award; it is a discipline of continuous verification and must be resourced accordingly.”

She said the extent of non-compliance suggests a systemic problem rather than isolated failures. Possible causes, she said, include inadequate infrastructure, a shortage of environmental health officers and insufficient funding.

“Children are most at risk because many are still developing their immunity, and some have vulnerabilities that make infections much more dangerous for them than for adults,” she said.

When the Limpopo department of education appeared before parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Basic Education earlier this month, officials said they were assisting schools that were not fully compliant but did not provide timelines for bringing all kitchens up to standard.

Calvin Molongoana, the department’s deputy director-general for corporate governance, coordination and support, told parliament that schools were continuing to feed learners while following basic food preparation guidance.

“Schools continue to ensure that not only learners are fed but our NSNP handlers do follow the basic guidance on how to go about preparing the food, irrespective of the undesirable infrastructure in our schools,” he said.

In the Eastern Cape, education spokesperson Mali Mtima told EdDesk that the department holds quarterly meetings with health services to assess and provide support where necessary.

“We are actively collaborating with the infrastructure directorate through the NSNP to obtain comprehensive data on newly constructed schools,” he said.

(supplied) But for Getyeza-Ntswam, compliance cannot be treated as a one-off administrative exercise.

She said five simultaneous interventions were required, starting with increasing the capacity of environmental health services so that schools can be regularly assessed and supported to reach compliance.

The government should also regulate food traders operating around schools. She pointed to the department of basic education’s own tuck-shop guidelines, which require schools to have agreements with on-site vendors and maintain records of food sellers.

Those requirements should also ensure that vendors have valid COAs, while municipalities should have stronger enforcement powers over informal traders operating outside school gates.

She also called for food safety to be built into the education system through handler training, food safety education and active school governing body oversight.

Schools should undergo individual needs assessments, she said, with government funding the infrastructure and equipment gaps identified.

Finally, procurement systems must be linked directly to food safety compliance. Getyeza-Ntswam said the missing piece was continuous verification.

COA and Regulation 638 compliance should be checked before suppliers receive contracts and then audited throughout the contract period. Cold-chain and temperature-control capacity should be verified for every vehicle and warehouse handling perishable and cooked food.

A supplier whose contract was terminated because of contamination in one district should also not simply be allowed to tender again elsewhere in the province, she said.

Investing in food safety is ultimately cheaper than dealing with the consequences of an outbreak. “Hot-holding equipment, uniforms, pallets, and training cost a fraction of what an outbreak costs: emergency hospital admissions, litigation, lost instructional time, and the reputational toll of another preventable child’s death.”

This story was produced by The Education Desk, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to addressing schooling challenges in South Africa.