Just noticed in passing this answer on Hansard to a Parliamentary Question about the government’s obesity strategy:
the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is an important element of the Government’s work to address the serious and growing problem of childhood obesity. Established in 2005, the NCMP weighs and measures children in reception year (aged four to five years) and year six (aged 10 to 11 years). Significantly improved coverage has produced one of the largest collections of data on children’s height and weight in the world
I bet it has! In fact there’s probably more child-data swilling around the UK than in the rest of the world combined, but whether that’s something to be proud of – like, say, having the largest stamp collection – is another matter.
NB. In the earlier part of the answer (won’t bore you with the whole thing) Dawn Primarolo finds a whole new ‘at risk’ category, as in: “families that are most at risk from child weight issues”.