Britain's largest specialist schoolwear retailer has expanded its range of outsized uniforms for sale "off the peg" in response to growing demand from parents who are struggling to find clothes to fit their overweight children.
In what health campaigners say is the latest evidence of the growing obesity epidemic affecting children and teenagers, the National Schoolwear Centres chain is announcing today that it is to offer blazers with 52-inch chests, trousers with 42-inch waists and shirts with 17.5-inch collars. The company said it believes they are the biggest sizes in the school uniform market in the UK.
The garments are designed for boys, although the retailer says it is already offering blouses to fit a 48-inch bust in its existing range for girls at secondary school.
The retailer's managing director, Graham Michelli, said: "The overall trend is that ... boys and girls are getting bigger and girls' legs are getting longer. At the start of the school year one of our stores sold uniforms to two 11-year-old boys. One was fitted with a 26-inch blazer and the other a 48-inch blazer. That is the sort of range we are seeing. One of our stores was even asked for a pair of trousers with a 48-inch waist for a 13-year-old girl."
Until recently the company, which clothes one million primary and secondary schoolchildren every year, manufactured larger items only as special one-offs to order. But it received so many such requests that it decided to expand the larger size range - known as Sturdy Fit.
The chain has 60 stores throughout the UK and Ireland, with a turnover of £20m a year. The new items will be available in the shops for the start of the academic year in September.
Mr Michelli said the company would not be judgmental about what appeared to be a national trend: "If people want the larger sizes then we are here to make them." Surveys have revealed that youngsters unable to wear the right school uniform can be bullied.
The campaign group Sustain, which incorporates the Children's Food Campaign, said the new sizing was a reflection of the state of youngsters' health. One child in three in the UK is overweight or clinically obese, and that figure could rise to one in two by 2020 if children are not encouraged to eat and live more healthily. Childhood obesity can lead to diabetes, bowel cancer and heart disease.
Ruairi O'Connor, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "While we can't expect kids to squeeze into school uniforms that are too small for them, it is a worrying sign of how big the childhood obesity problem has become when businesses start catering for our children's expanding waistlines.
"If the government is to meet its target to halt the year-on-year rise of obesity in children under 11 by 2010 it has to recognise and respond to warning signs that the battle is being lost."
