National Child Measurement Programme, England 2020/21 School Year

The impact of a partial NCMP collection year has had a significant impact on the data below national level.

At region level, the larger sample sizes and data quality analysis indicates that the findings are broadly comparable to previous NCMP years and therefore outputs at region level are included in this section. 2020/21 data has not been published at Local Authority level.

Fewer children were measured in 2020/21 than in 2019/20 and consequently the confidence intervals around their prevalence estimates are slightly wider than those for rates for earlier years and the rates are similar to those of some other regions. Regional rates have been compared to the figures for England, the national average.

Reception

The prevalence of obesity in 2020/21 was lower than the England rate for the South East (12.6%) and the South West (12.9%). Regions with obesity prevalence rates above the England national average were Yorkshire and the Humber (15.3%), London (15.3%) and the West Midlands (15.9%).

The prevalence for obesity in 2020/21 was higher than in 2019/20 in all regions. The largest increase was in London, where it increased from 10.0% by 5.3 percentage points to 15.3%.  The smallest increases were in the South East (3.7 percentage points) and the South West (3.8 percentage points).