Samagra Shiksha 3.0: Time for a school wellbeing score

This article is authored by Pawan Agarwal and Rajan Sankar.

Lunchtime in most Indian schools is rarely a calm pause for a healthy meal. It is rushed, noisy, and often chaotic. In many government schools, children eat quickly, pick what they like, waste the rest, and turn to packaged snacks even when hot meals are served. Teachers are rarely present, and lunch becomes a race to finish and run out to play.

Classroom (REUTERS)

Private schools tell an equally troubling story. Canteens are packed with sugary, ultra-processed foods, and lunchboxes mirror the same. Children eat in haste, amid chatter and swapping. Across both systems, lunch is shaped more by speed and convenience than by care and nourishment. As a result, children never develop a healthy relationship with food and are left to navigate unhealthy choices for life on their own

Of course, there are exceptions. Some schools have created calm, caring meal spaces, with attentive teachers and thoughtful routines. But across large parts of the system especially where resources and supervision are stretched, lunch remains a hurried interval rather than a protected moment for children’s learning and wellbeing.

As India prepares to roll out Samagra Shiksha 3.0, this everyday reality offers a clear signal: if foundational learning is to improve, nutrition and wellbeing can no longer sit on the sidelines of school reform.

This is often framed as a public health challenge. It is also an education crisis. A hungry or poorly nourished child cannot concentrate, participate fully, or benefit from even the best-designed classroom instruction.

To its credit, India already runs the world’s largest school meal programme, feeding over 118 million children every day through PM POSHAN. Attendance has improved in many states. But meals are still treated largely as a feeding exercise served, eaten, and cleared away. They are rarely leveraged to build healthy habits.

This is a missed opportunity.

Behavioural science tells us that eating is not just a choice; it is a habit, shaped daily by routines, peers, and repeated exposure. Textbooks alone cannot change behaviour. Children may know what is healthy, yet still gravitate toward what is salty, sweet, colourful, and socially rewarded. What truly matters, is what they practise every day.

Countries like Japan offer a useful lesson. There, school meals are treated as part of education itself. Children serve one another, eat together under teacher guidance, and learn hygiene, responsibility, and respect for food through daily routines. Lunch is not just a break. It is a living classroom.

India has the scale to do something similar.

The solution does not lie in adding new subjects or burdening teachers with more content. It is simpler and more practical: use the meal itself as a learning moment. Even ten minutes a day, woven into existing routines, can help children understand balance, variety, hydration, and mindful eating. PM POSHAN can evolve from a feeding mechanism into a habit-building platform, with similar approaches adapted for private schools.

This is where a powerful idea from this year’s Economic Survey becomes especially relevant: introducing a School Wellbeing Score, alongside academic results, to help schools prioritise student health.

Such a score shifts the focus from marks alone to the everyday environments that shape children’s lives. It brings together food access, nutrition education, physical activity, mental wellbeing, teacher engagement, and family partnership into a simple 100-point framework. Rather than ranking students, it looks at school routines: Are meals balanced and safe? Are children active? Are teachers guiding healthy habits? Are families engaged as partners?

By making wellbeing visible and measurable, the School Wellbeing Score gives schools a practical way to reflect on current practices, identify gaps, and improve steadily over time. It also offers parents a fuller picture of school quality, one that goes beyond exam results.

Importantly, this shift is not about policing lunchboxes or moralising food choices. It is about building healthier defaults through everyday practice. Teachers become facilitators. Families become partners. Schools become spaces where good habits are quietly reinforced.

Some school-based initiatives show how this can work in practice. By turning mealtimes into brief learning moments and revisiting simple habits regular meals, hygiene, movement, choosing healthier foods, reducing waste schools can help children build lifelong routines without adding to classroom pressure. Recognition systems, linked to the School Wellbeing Score, further encourage participation and continuity rather than competition.

As India advances foundational learning under Samagra Shiksha 3.0 and NIPUN Bharat, this is an opportunity to course-correct. Learning outcomes cannot improve without nutrition and wellbeing outcomes. Both must move together.

Looking toward 2047, the real question is not whether children know what healthy food is. It is whether healthy eating becomes normal, routine, and practised every day.

By integrating PM POSHAN with classroom life, extending similar principles to private schools, and adopting a School Wellbeing Score as part of how we judge school quality, India can align learning with health and transform its largest feeding programme into its largest habit-building movement.

This article is authored by Pawan Agarwal, founder and CEO, Food Future Foundation and former CEO, FSSAI and Rajan Sankar, founding director, The India Nutrition Initiative (TINI) and former director, nutrition, Tata Trusts.