Publication, Part of National Child Measurement Programme
National Child Measurement Programme, England, 2023/24 School Year
Official statistics, National statistics, Accredited official statistics
This publication for the 2023/24 School Year is the last to be produced by NHS England.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) will be responsible for publishing the accredited official statistics report from the 2024/25 School Year, and have announced the planned publication date for the 2024/25 report.
Please see the NCMP report series page for additional details.
27 May 2025 17:00 PM
Part 6: Data Quality
Data Quality - Coverage
The participation rate is the percentage of children who have been measured in mainstream state-maintained schools out of those eligible for measurement (this excludes children who could not be measured due to physical or mental impairment). Note: participation rate data was not collected or published in 2019/20 and 2020/21 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on these collection years.
The overall national rate has increased from 80% in 2006/07 to 94% in 2023/24.
The participation rate can affect the accuracy of estimates derived from the data. For example, if the participation rate is very low in a local authority, then the prevalence estimates for the BMI categories should be treated with caution as those children measured may not be representative of all children in the LA. See appendix B of the appendices for more detail.
Data Quality – Missing and imprecise data
Missing data
The proportion of missing data items has improved over time although it still remains quite high for NHS number and ethnicity.
17 LAs had over 25% of records with missing NHS numbers, 7 LAs had more than 15% of records without an ethnicity code.
Imprecise data
By chance, 10% of height and weight measurements would be expected to be whole numbers. However, there is some evidence of LAs rounding heights to whole numbers as 7 LAs had over 20% of their heights being whole numbers and nationally 16% of heights were whole numbers in 2023/24.
Data Quality – Timeliness
The NCMP data collection system has data quality checks incorporated into it, so that local authorities can check and correct their submitted data for unexpected issues. These are presented as a number of data quality indicators. In 2023/24 all LAs signed off their data quality indicators.
Table 9 shows the data quality indicators by submitting local authority with breaching indicators highlighted in red and breach reasons as provided by the LA on submission (if applicable).
For more information: See Table 9: Data quality indicators for the NCMP collection by submitting local authority.
Last edited: 27 May 2025 5:00 pm