Pupils are to be regularly weighed in primary schools in England for the first time in 18 months from this September amid fears the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the UK’s child obesity problem.
The measurements, designed to alert parents that their children are at risk of developing a weight problem, were cancelled in March 2020 as the country entered the first coronavirus lockdown.
Experts fear that since then a combination of homeschooling, less regular exercise and easier access to snacks has had a detrimental effect on the waistlines of the nation’s children.
But they say that since the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) was halted they cannot know the full extent of the problem.
Tam Fry, the chair of the National Obesity Forum, said: “We expect the figures will have gone up and we expect the results, when we get them, to be a real jolt to Boris Johnson.
“We have got to do something very serious about this problem. We cannot wait to the end of Covid. I am absolutely delighted that the [NCMP] is coming back.”
He said that while experts could not put a figure on how much weight children had put on since March last year, anecdotal evidence suggested that it was significant.
Even before the pandemic the UK had some of the highest rates of overweight children in western Europe. Around one in three children leaving primary school in England were overweight, with one in five classified as obese.
The problem was also getting worse. The latest available results from NCMP show that in reception class – ages four and five – the prevalence of obesity increased from 9.7 per cent in 2018-19 to 9.9 per cent in 2019-20. In year 6, that figure rose from 20.2 per cent 2018-19 to 21 per cent the following year.
Mr Fry called on ministers to respond to the Covid crisis by increasing the frequency of weigh-ins to once a year.
Under the current scheme, schoolchildren are weighed just twice in primary school.
Russell Viner, a past president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), said the programme was “hugely important for us post-pandemic”.
“There are a number of reasons to be concerned that the pandemic has increased obesity across the population – including in children,” he said.
“[But] we have no data on what the pandemic has done to obesity in children and the NCMP is essential for this.”
Labour called on the government to ensure the programme was backed by the “public health resources needed to tackle obesity”.
Shadow public health minister Alex Norris said: “We can’t just shame children and their parents into losing weight after a difficult 18 months – schools and families must be given the help needed if we’re to see any real improvement in the obesity crisis.”
Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Munira Wilson said that while the pause to the programme during the pandemic was understandable, “now that it is safe to go ahead, the government should waste no time in putting in place a proper strategy to tackle the obesity crisis facing children in the UK”.
The scheme was restarted in a handful of schools late last year, with a planned full-scale return in January.
That had to be abandoned, however, when the government was again forced to close every school in the country after a surge in Covid cases.
Public Health England hopes the resumption of the programme will help professionals understand how the coronavirus crisis has affected children and allow them to support parents and families who need to maintain a healthier weight.
Guidance on the NCMP warns children with obesity are five times more likely to suffer from the condition as adults. Children living with obesity are also more likely to be ill, be absent from school, and require more medical attention than their classmates who are a healthy weight.
Government sources said that the programme would be resumed in full for the next academic year, as long as no new Covid-related barriers emerge in the meantime.
Last summer Boris Johnson suggested Britons should lose weight to help the NHS prepare for a possible second wave of Covid-19 in the winter. No similar call has this year been made by the prime minister, who admitted after he was hospitalised with Covid-19 that he struggled with his weight.
