National Child Measurement Programme, England, 2021/22 school year

Children living with obesity is a good indicator of adults living with obesity which can lead to poor health outcomes. 

The NCMP is a key element of the Government’s approach to tackling childhood obesity by annually measuring over one million children and providing reliable data on the rates of children living with obesity. Children are measured in reception (aged 4–5 years) and year 6 (aged 10–11 years) in mainstream state-maintained schools in England. Independent and special schools are excluded.  See “Coverage” in appendix B for more details.

The programme was launched in the 2005/06 academic year and now holds sixteen years of reliable data. 2006/07 is the first year that the data are considered to be robust due to the low participation in 2005/06.

NCMP data enables local areas to plan services to tackle childhood 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 analysis of the 2021/22 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. The BMI classification "living with obesity" always includes the classification "living with severe obesity" - see Definitions below for further details.

Geographical analyses in this report are primarily based on the postcode of the child’s home address which is mapped to a lower super output area.  Some time series analyses use the school postcode as the child postcode was poorly populated in the early years of the NCMP and these are labelled in the report.

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”. When a comparison does not show a statistically significant difference, this will be described using terms such as “similar to” or “the same as". 

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.