Poorer pupils are ‘more likely to be obese’

The National Child Measurement Programme shows stark differences in obesity depending on where children live with some areas having twice as high figures as others.

In reception year, 12 per cent of children living in the most deprived areas were obese, compared to 5.7 per cent in the least deprived areas.

Figures also reveal there were parts of Yorkshire where at least one-in-five children in their final year of primary school were obese.

The report from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) found that nationally fewer children in reception class were obese than eight years ago but more pupils aged ten and 11 were found to be overweight or obese. Nationally the percentage of children in reception year (aged four or five) who were obese was 9.1 per cent in 2014-15. This compares to 9.9 per cent in 2006/07.

The number of reception children who were classed as being either obese or overweight has also fallen from 22.9 per cent in 2006/07 to 21.9 per cent in the most recent statistics. However there were more children in year six who were overweight or obese than there was eight years ago.

The figures show that nearly a fifth of children in their last year of primary school were classed as obese (19.1 per cent) and a third were overweight or obese.

This compares with 17.5 per cent who were obese and 31.6 per cent who were obese or overweight in 2006/07. In Yorkshire one-in-ten children in reception were found to be obese in Kirklees, Richmondshire, North East Lincolnshire and Hull.

And in year six the highest prevalence of obesity in Yorkshire was found among pupils in Hull (22.4 per cent), Rotherham (21.6 per cent,) Bradford (21.5 per cent) and Doncaster (20 per cent).

Nationally the highest number of overweight and obese children in year six was in Southwark and Newham, where the figure was 43.2 per cent.

This contrasts with 26 per cent of children in Surrey.

Meanwhile, 25.9 per cent of year six children in Wolverhampton were said to be obese while Richmond-upon-Thames had the lowest level of obese year six children at 10.5 per cent,

Simon Gillespie, the chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, said: “Falling rates of obesity in reception age children is promising, but the fact remains that we now have more children leaving primary school overweight or obese and this is simply unacceptable.”