I thank Archives of Disease in Childhood for affording me the right of reply to the letter by Hall et al.1 As always, when given this courtesy, it is hard to know whether first to rebut my detractors’ final statement and work backwards or to begin from the top. Assuming that you’ve just read their challenge – and haven’t already yourself fallen for the appeal of the Response button – I’ll deal with the school entry issue first.

As all the signatories must know, even an accurate single growth screen at school entry is virtually worthless since it will confirm only how tall, short, fat or thin the child is on the day the child is measured. The Coventry Consensus was, therefore, wrong not to recommend an appropriate second or third measurement to establish the trend, and the many people who disagreed with the single check decision (see below) were right. Unfortunately, they didn’t insist enough that the staffing …