Now that we’re back into the swing of the school year – by which I mean treated myself and Avery for head lice last week – I thought it was a good time to give my annual reminder that if your kids are in Reception or Year 6, they will be weighed at school.
Today, I’m pulling together some of the podcasts and writing I’ve done on this topic to give you a primer on what it is, why it sucks, and what you can do about it. Many thanks to Jennifer for helping me pull this information together.
What is the NCMP?
The National Child Measurement Programme is a mandated programme for state schools run by local authorities in England, whereby a team of healthcare assistants or school nurses come into school to measure the height and weight of children in Reception (ages 4-5) and Year 6 (ages 10-11). Particularly in Reception, it might be combined with other health checks such as a hearing or eye test.
The NCMP began as a data collection exercise back in 2006 but slowly morphed into an ob*sity screening tool once the introduction of weight feedback was introduced in 2011 - parents and caregivers began receiving a letter informing them of their kid’s BMI and the weight category they fell into. If children fall into the overweight category or above, families are signposted to local weight management services and healthy lifestyle resources online, such as the NHS Healthier Families site.
Back in 2023 I spoke to Molly Forbes, founder of Body Happy Org, a non-profit which works with schools, families, and communities to tackle body shame and build lasting change through education, inclusion, and prevention. We had a really interesting chat about the NCMP, particularly in relation to Body Happy’s work to foster a culture of body respect amongst children - if you haven’t listened to it, you can do so here.
‘It's been reframed as this sort of health intervention over recent years,’ Molly says of the NCMP, ‘as the rhetoric around the O word, ob*sity, which I don't use that word in my work, but that's the word that we'll see here in the media. As that kind of rhetoric has really got more aggressive, then the argument for the NCMP has been that this is a positive thing for our children's health and it's really important and…it's a totally politicised programme.’
What does it tell us about rates of childhood ob*sity? Are they really on the rise?
The NHS publish NCMP data online so we can see for ourselves the trends in children’s weight over the years. Contrary to the headlines we see in the media, the rates of childhood ob*sity have not been changing at the alarming rate we’re told. Data from the 2023/2024 programme shows that Reception prevalence of ‘severe ob*sity’ is at 2.6%, compared to the 2.4% reported in 2006 when the programme began. As nutritionist and CIHAS team member Jennifer Nash points out (check out my conversation with her here on her research into experiences of the NCMP), ‘essentially the programme isn't impacting those figures. It's not impacting children's weight in a dramatic sense.’ Interestingly, and again contrary to what we hear in the headlines, 2023/2024 data shows Year 6 prevalence of overweight is the lowest it’s ever been at 13.8%, whereas Year 6 prevalence of underweight is actually increasing each year.
Jennifer also highlights the fact that the COVID lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 halted the running of the NCMP: ‘During COVID, this programme was paused and didn't run at full capacity. So some of the figures that were brought out for those years, 2020 and 2021, are figures that have been projected.’ You’ll notice on the 2023/2024 graphs that some of the projected figures for this period appear distinct from other years - for example the percentage of Reception children predicted to be severely ob*se in 2020/21 is 4.7%, compared with reported figures of 2.5% in 2019/20 and 2.9% in 2021/22. Again, Year 6 figures in 2019/20 of overweight were 35.1% and 37.8% in 2021/22, yet the projected percentage in 2020/21 is listed as 40.9%.
The language around the promotion of the NCMP presents the programme as a positive, health-enhancing event for our kids. As Molly points out, ‘it is a data collection exercise, [but] it's being reframed as a health check – and so lots of parents are then worried about opting out because they think, well, it's a health check. Just the same way that your child's two year check with their health visitor is a health check, people think it's the same thing. And it's really important to know that it is not the same thing. It is absolutely not the same thing.’ Important to note, if you choose to opt your child out of the NCMP, this doesn’t mean you’re opting them out of the hearing or sight tests that might be carried out at the same time.
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