Weight & height measurement at school

[greyinganddecaying]

Can anyone answer a question about this please?

Just had a letter about y6 child height/weight measurement. Fwiw he's at the top end of "normal" for both - he does lots of sports & there's no fat on him, so I wouldn't have been concerned if not.

But reading the letter it states that anyone 91% or over in weight is considered overweight. But this is regardless of height. This doesn't seem right to me - surely if you're at the 95th percentile for BOTH weight & height, you're in proportion? Am I missing something here?

I would suspect if on a similar percentile then there wouldn’t be too much of an issue. However, the weight distribution will be skewed by overweightness in a way height won’t, which is probably why they have that rule. It’s to prompt a conversation rather than a definitive your child is definitely overweight, I suspect.

The measurement they give you accounts for height in it. It's the BMI measurement for kids, which you plug weight, height and age into and you get a percentile back.

i think you're quoting the BMI centile, which is the one the national paediatric survey uses.

Not the weight in isolation.

So it sounds as if you've got a remarkably confusingly worded letter there - lots of people muddle up BMI centile with the others, but the NHS (who run the survey) really shouldn't!!

BMI takes in to account height and weight.

The 'healthy range' for BMI is something like 3rd-91st centile, so quite a lot of variation.