• The National Childhood Obesity Database (NCOD) is the largest database of its kind in the world, with enormous potential as a tool both for tracking and analysing trends in childhood obesity, and for guiding evidence based interventions to tackle this major public health problem.
• The first year of data collection has been hampered by a number of
practical difficulties. These have had a significant impact on data quality and seriously limit the reliability of the results for this year, as a result of which many of the figures in this report need to be treated with considerable caution.
• There is anecdotal evidence of higher rates of opting out of the
measurement process among heavier children, which is supported by the
findings of this analysis. This means the figures obtained from the NCOD are likely systematically to underestimate the prevalence of overweight and obesity.
• Altogether, 538,400 children in Reception Year and Year 6 were measured – approximately 48% of those eligible.