Child obesity is a growing cause for concern in both North America and the United Kingdom. Despite a number of initiatives to tackle the problem, rates of childhood obesity continue to rise on both sides of the Atlantic. Nowhere is the problem more acute than the UK, which is believed to have the fastest-growing rate of obesity in the developed world. In 2001, 23 per cent of British women and 21 per cent of British men were obese, compared to 8 per cent of women and 6 per cent of men in 1980. Childhood obesity has almost doubled since the mid 1980s. Indeed, between 1996 and 2001, the proportion of overweight children aged 6 to 15 years old increased by 7 per cent, whilst the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF), has warned that over 40 per cent of the UK population could be obese "within a generation". This paper examines the changes in English education law which have facilitated this increase in obesity rates, and considers too the changes which have recently been made or are currently under consideration in order to try to reverse the trend.

Any modern democracy with an established religion faces a dilemma. On the one hand, the fact of establishment itself implies one true faith. On the other hand, discrimination (except for good reason in carefully defined circumstances) is unacceptable. An irony compounds this 'democratic dilemma': whatever may be the established religion, it does not necessarily follow that it is practised by the majority of the population. Indeed, it seems quite possible that more Brits currently find spiritual solace in various cults rather than traditional religions.

This paper explores the role of religion in both public and private education in England and Wales, from K-12 through to post-secondary education. It finds that the means by which the law continues to wrestle with the above conundrum is not necessarily well chosen. The pattern of legislation has been to lay down with one hand a blanket prohibition on religiously-based discrimination; but then, with the other, to provide for exceptions to this ostensible norm which actually mean that those of a particular religious persuasion often do receive preferential treatment.