A recent study has claimed children grow faster during school terms.

Researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas have announced their findings from a five-year long experiment that included more than 3500 children.

The Daily Mail reports the experiment included children from 41 schools around the city of Sugar Land, Texas and followed a process where a nurse measured each child’s height and weight in September and again in April – to match the American schooling terms.

In a study published in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists reported that first-year primary school students grew by an extra half a millimetre a month on average between September and April and claim the reason for this is because the routine of a school timetable helps children eat and sleep better.

Scientists went on to note that “exposure to the daily light-dark cycle” eg the amount of time spent awake during daylight hours may promote growth and results showed children grew significantly more during the school year compared to the summer months.

The study also measured the children’s BMI – body mass index – to record weight gain in different body types and noted that 52.5 per cent of children were at a “persistently healthy weight” while 22.6 per cent were “chronically overweight or obese”.

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