Last week, 7,000 standard six students made their academic worth known in the PSE and today over nine thousand standard one students had their heights taken. Unlike the PSE, the height census is not the kind of test students can fail, but much like the PSE, it says a lot about how children are really doing behind the growing up giggles and broad school-aged smiles. So, this morning, instead of the conventions three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic, standard one students were asked: “are you tall enough for your age?” Jacqueline Godwin found out that this census has set its goals high.

Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
The one hundred and four standard one students from St. Luke Methodist School are among the nine thousand boys and girls who took time out from their regular classes today to be measured. The children are measured to see if they are growing at expected rates and to determine if there may be underlying factors affecting their growth.

Sakenah Lopez, Standard 1 Teacher – St. Luke’s
“It gives us the teacher an awareness of the children with their growth, if it is normal, moderate, or if they are suffering from severe growth retardation. But it doesn’t necessarily classify them as having poor nutrition but it still helps us because we can tell whether these children, there are all these different factors that can affect these children’s growth.”

The students are measured under the close supervision of the Ministries of Education and Health. Each child’s measurement will be forwarded to the Institute of Nutrition for Central America and Panama and the regional programme on food and nutrition. There it will be determined if factors such as chronic malnutrition and socio economic and environmental ills are stunting their growth.

Robyn Daly, Nutritionist – Ministry of Health
“It gives the Ministry and it gives everybody in the country an idea of how our children are growing point blank. The height measured today is measured with their age and so we’re looking at that for girls and for boys and it is going to give us an idea if is my child growing adequate for the age. What that tells us down the road is what are we feeding that child up to that point. Each stage in the child’s life is very important. So from the moment the child is born, the length of breast feeding, what we give that child after the child comes off the breast milk is very important so all of this plays a role. The preschool years, what we are packing in our child’s lunch box, all of these things play a role – what they are being fed at home. All of these things impact the child’s growth.”

As you can see the exercise involves more than just standing against a wall and having their height recorded. The teachers who are taking the measurements were trained for one day and are guided by a scientific table to get the precise result.

Robyn Daly,
“Here for the girl must be combed in a flat manner, it can’t be an up-do or plaits or none of these things. So the parents were notified to try to cooperate with the teachers and assist in the combing of the hair. Even when we are measuring the children, you notice some of them are moving about a lot, they are fidgeting, so we have to do that measurement over. Things like that we have to make sure their legs are together, their knees are not bent – all of this has to be done properly. We don’t want to get wrong results.”

Three years ago when the first national height census of school children in Belize was carried out, 3,454 school children measured showed growth retardation. That was 15.4% of the 22,426 school children measured.

Robyn Daly,
“It is showing that malnutrition issues are present. Malnutrition in the form of feeding patterns, what we are giving our children in the young phase, the duration of breast feeding – it is pointing to all of this. So many measures have been taken, more research was done and this is the findings that took place from that.”

When 7News visited St. Luke’s Methodist just over a dozen students had been measured and at that time there was only one case of concern.

Robyn Daly,
“I monitored about fifteen children today. I have a couple more schools to do in the city. But what I noticed from them is that the children were fidgeting a bit but so far the results look good. The results are not bad from what I can see so far. I noticed one within the 15 so that is not too bad. It is a small group and we just started our monitoring but countrywide, personnel from the Ministries of Health and Education will be doing monitoring and checks throughout the country to ensure it is done in an efficient and correct manner.”

A total of two hundred and eighty five primary schools participated. The most recent height census in 1996 – found growth retardation in 15.4% of the 22,426 children between ages six and nine. The result of this census will not be known for another three months.