Amount of obese reception-age children rises
The amount of obese four and five-year-olds rose from 9.5% in 2017-18 to 9.7% in 2018-19, equating to 58,000 children.
According to the The National Child Measurement Programme, this is a decrease of 0.2 percentage points from the earliest comparable year in 2006-07 when obesity prevalence in reception-aged children stood at 9.9 per cent.
Among year 6 pupils, who are aged 10 and 11, obesity prevalence was 20.2% in 2018-19 (121,000 children). This is similar to the level in 2017-18, when it was 20.1%.
The earliest comparable figures for year 6 pupils date back to 2009-10 when obesity prevalence was 18.7%. This is an increase of 1.5 percentage points over nine years.
The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) – overseen by Public Health England and analysed and reported by NHS Digital – measures the height and weight of over one million children in England annually and provides robust data on the number of children in reception and year 6 who are underweight, healthy weight, overweight, obese or severely obese.
In 2018-19, 22.6% of reception children and 34.3% of year 6 children were either overweight or obese.
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