PARENTS are to be sent official warning letters if their children are found to be obese after ministers decided to bring back routine weighing of primary school children.

In an effort to tackle the growing problem of childhood obesity, the government has revived the weighing and measuring of all primary school children at four and 10 years old.

The mass weigh-in will take place this summer and from next year parents of any overweight children will be warned their offspring face long-term health damage unless they lose weight.

Ministers have decided to overrule the concerns of some health professions who believe telling parents the test results will stigmatise children and could lead to bullying.

Health minister Caroline Flint believes parents are the main influence on their children and wants them to lead the campaign. She said: “It is families who first and foremost influence what their children eat and what their children do in terms of exercise.”

A health select committee report two years ago called for the reintroduction of the traditional school medical — which was standard until the 1970s and involved weighing and measuring children — to be brought back for primary school children. Pupils will wear light summer clothing for the weigh-in and will be told why they are being measured.

The committee’s report said parents should be told of the results in confidence, given advice and, if necessary, be referred to specialist services.

The government pledged to introduce weighing and measuring of children in its white paper Choosing Health, which was unveiled in November 2004 by the then health secretary John Reid.

Nurses opposed the plans saying they would be an invasion of pupils’ privacy and could stigmatise fat children.

John Thain, the Royal College of Nursing adviser on children and young people’s nursing, has warned that if these tests are conducted children will perceive adults as “figures who put them under surveillance”.

Thain said a better solution would be for nurses to run drop-in clinics for overweight children.

The government’s decision to revive the weighing of children has stretched resources in some parts of the country.

Suffolk is thought to have been given just a month to weigh 10,000 children. The task has been complicated by a national shortage of government-approved scales caused by the new initiative.

Once figures are available they will only be given to parents who request them. Parents will also be given the right to refuse permission for their children to be tested and can ask not to be sent next year’s results.

The government has pledged to reduce the increase in obesity among primary school children by 2010.

The new data will allow the Department of Health to produce a detailed map of childhood obesity in England.

Last night the department confirmed the weighing and collection of obesity data would be going ahead.

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