From policy to practice: teacher capacity as the missing link in food and nutrition education reform in Tamil Nadu, India.

INTRODUCTION: Globally, comprehensive education systems for improved public health are thought to include food and nutrition education. The Sustainable Development Goals 2, 3, 4, and 12 are all clearly advocating this. Food and Nutrition Education (FNE) is still implemented unevenly and primarily depends on individual teachers, even with the strong support of policies like India's NEP 2020 and UNESCO's 2024 Global Education Monitoring Report. The current study investigated whether primary school teachers who felt supported by their schools are sufficiently confident in their teaching methods to convert national and international policies and guidelines into real, useful lessons at the classroom level.

METHODS: Our study utilized a convergent mixed-methods approach. We surveyed a total of 427 teachers from 12 government primary schools in Tamil Nadu, India. Schools were selected through purposive maximum variation sampling across urban (Chennai) and five adjacent rural districts, and teachers were identified based on continuous service in Grades 1 to 5. Five domain experts validated the instrument with a CVR = 0.94, which included self-efficacy, training history, curricular preferences, and perceived barriers, all of which used a 5-point Likert scale. To analyze quantitative data, SPSS was used v28.0. Levene's test was used to test the homogeneity of variance, and independent samples t-tests were used to compare means between urban and rural areas. The associations between the main variables were quantified using Pearson's r. Implementation confidence was predicted using a hierarchical multiple regression model, after controlling for location, years of experience, training exposure and school infrastructure. The 32 semi-structured interviews were transcribed, translated, and analyzed thematically following Braun and Clarke's framework and inter-coder reliability was found to be κ = 0.89. The design is in response to the call of OECD for teacher agency in the localization of curriculum.

RESULTS: A striking 79.4% of teachers reported no formal training in nutrition pedagogy. Self-efficacy scores were significantly lower among rural teachers (M = 2.0, SD = 0.7) than among their urban counterparts (M = 3.5, SD = 0.8; t(425) = -8.17, p < 0.001, d = 1.63). Teacher confidence was strongly correlated with advocacy for a standalone FNE subject (r = 0.73, p < 0.001). Regression analysis revealed that prior training (β = 0.54, p < 0.001) and urban location (β = 0.33, p = 0.001) were the strongest predictors of implementation confidence, together explaining 67% of the variance (R 2 = 0.67, adjusted R 2 = 0.65, F (4, 422) = 78.93, p < 0.001). Qualitative analysis yielded three robust themes: (1) the syllabus squeeze, a structural barrier to dedicated FNE time; (2) the cultural privileging of doctor-led authority over pedagogical expertise; and (3) the absence of state-mandated, contextually relevant teaching modules.

DISCUSSION: This research transcends the anecdotal call for the training of teachers by empirically grounding and identifying policy-actionable deficits in educators' capacity. The data clearly show that FNE will remain a peripheral aspiration rather than a core competency if the best pedagogical practices are not adapted. Based on England's statutory Cooking and Nutrition framework, we suggest instituting required FNE modules in B.Ed. and D.Ed. programs to comply with the WHO's 2023 School Nutrition Policy Guidelines while resolving regional delivery issues.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, it is crucial to make systematic and ongoing investments in their professional development if primary educators are to confidently deliver food and nutrition education that supports children's growth and development alongside core literacy and numeracy. The shift from merely endorsing policies to building capacity based on evidence is long overdue. Apart from India, many LMICs share the identified obstacles of training gaps, curriculum marginalization, and cultural deference to non-educators. For any LMIC hoping to operationalize global FNE commitments through empowered, classroom-ready teachers, the study provides a scalable diagnostic and prescriptive framework for measuring training exposure, self-efficacy disparities, curricular legitimacy, and institutional barriers to FNE in LMIC contexts.