Despite the popularity of school meals, little evidence exists on their effect on health outcomes. This study uses newly available longitudinal data from the state of Andhra Pradesh in India to estimate the impact of the introduction of a national midday meal program on anthropometric z-scores of primary school students, and investigates whether the program ameliorated the deterioration of health in young children caused by a severe drought.

Various studies have noted that students enrolled in private schools in India perform better on average than students in government schools. In this paper, I show that large gaps in the test scores of children in private and public sector education are evident even at the point of initial enrolment in formal schooling and are associated with previous attendance in private and public preschools. Children in the sample were aged between 4.5 and 6 years at the time of the survey and were tested on receptive vocabulary and quantitative skills.

As part of the ongoing collaboration between Young Lives and the NOVELLA (Narratives of Varied Everyday Lives and Linked Approaches) Family Lives and the Environment study based at the Institute of Education, Emma Wilson from Young Lives has been working closely with researchers Natasha Shukla and Janet Boddy to re-analyse a subset of qualitative data consisting of 8 Older Cohort children and their caregivers from the India (Andhra Pradesh) sample.

The growth and increasing popularity of "low-fee" private schooling across many parts of India has attracted much research and policy attention. This paper broadens the discussion by drawing attention to the increasing heterogeneity of the educational landscape in many communities. Our specific focus is on the consequences for school choices made by households across rural and urban Andhra Pradesh.