Outrage over proposal to weigh school children in the classroom

A major Australian medical organisation has sparked outrage after claiming that every school-aged child in the country should be weighed. 

The Australian College of Nursing (ACN) has recommended that kids should have ready access to a registered school nurse ‘to provide care and guidance to ensure the maintenance of healthy weight’. 

ACN’s interim CEO Leanne Boyd said the proportion of Australian children above a healthy weight – currently at 26 per cent – is continuing to increase. 

She said nurses are best positioned to identify at-risk children, educate families and combat weight stigma.

‘Nurse-led interventions, which are proven effective in various settings, offer a flexible and cost-effective solution,’ professor Boyd said.

‘Supporting nurses with training, resources and leadership opportunities is crucial to optimise impact in combating childhood obesity.’

But Sydney mum Kate McKenna slammed the ACN’s thinking on the issue, telling Daily Mail Australia: ‘What is the link between taking a measurement and changing outcomes?’

‘What’s their plan post measurement? What will they do with the data? Do you need weigh kids to know they’re fat?’

The ACN, in its Working with Children Above a Healthy Weight: Nurse-led interventions position statement, recommends the ‘collection and discussion of height and weight data of all children’.

It also wants nurses allowed ‘to identify children at risk and provide timely, sensitive interventions targeting a whole-family approach to improve eating and activity behaviours’. 

To do that would require ensuring ‘every school-aged child has access to a qualified nurse,’ professor Boyd said.

‘Measuring a child’s weight every day isn’t going to make them less fat,’ Ms McKenna said. 

‘Imagine the poor fat kids on the day the nurse comes to the school. The nit nurse becomes the fat nurse.’

There was some support for the plan online, though, with one commenter on X writing that it was the parents’ fault if children were overweight. 

‘Lazy fat parents produce lazy fat kids. For me this is child abuse,’ they wrote. 

‘Back in the 1950s we were svelte. The future cost to the health system is immense.’

Though the plan to weigh children at school is being pushed by experts at ACN, other experts disagree.

Dr Zali Yager, of body image advocacy group The Embrace Collective, said weighing children and identifying them as ‘overweight’ can lead to feelings of shame and stigma.

The Australian College of Nursing has recommending kids should have ready access to a registered nurse ‘to provide care and guidance to ensure the maintenance of healthy weight’. Stock image

‘I support the idea that ensures every school-aged child has access to a qualified nurse but suggest that this should be to support their health, not focus on their weight,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald.

‘The US is currently rolling back their widespread BMI (body mass index) screening programs because they were not helpful in changing weight, but very harmful for children’s psychological health.’

She added that weighing kids at school could have the opposite effect and lead to eating disorders, avoiding exercise and weight gain. 

Lisa Chalmers, the director of health and wellbeing at Barker College in the northern Sydney suburb of Hornsby, said focusing on a child’s weight could lead to body image concerns and make parents feel they were being judged.

‘We don’t have scales in our (school) health centre,’ she said.

‘We talk about how students can get the best out of our brains and bodies, how certain foods make them feel rather than look. 

‘We don’t focus on physical appearance.’

The number of Australians who are obese rose from 3.9million in 2012 to 6.3million in 2022, according to an Obesity Collective report earlier this year.

The group said being overweight or obese was linked to dozens of diseases, including 17 types of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, musculoskeletal conditions, type 2 diabetes, dementia, asthma and chronic kidney disease.