Child obesity is a good indicator of adult obesity which can lead to poor health outcomes.
The NCMP is a key element of the Government’s approach to tackling child obesity by annually measuring over one million children and providing reliable data on rates of childhood obesity. Children are measured in reception (aged 4–5 years) and year 6 (aged 10–11 years) in mainstream state-maintained schools1 in England.
The programme was launched in the 2005/06 academic year and now holds twelve years of reliable data2.
NCMP data enables local areas to plan services to tackle child obesity and monitor progress.
In most local authorities, parents also receive feedback on their child’s weight status along with the offer of further advice and support on achieving a healthy weight for their child.
This report contains analyses of the 2017/18 data showing Body Mass Index (BMI) classification rates with breakdowns by: child age and sex; local authority and region; levels of deprivation; urban/rural classification; ethnicity and ONS area classification. The report also contains comparisons over time where appropriate.
Comparisons between groups and over time have been statistically tested to determine whether differences are likely to be genuine (i.e. statistically significant) or the result of random natural variation. Only statistically significant differences have been described with terms such as “higher”, “lower”, “increase” or “decrease”.
The report is accompanied by:
- Data tables, including 95 per cent confidence intervals which should be considered when interpreting results.
- Technical appendices with information on data collection, validation, confidence intervals, statistical testing and the methodology used for BMI classification rates.