High Level Summary of Statistics Trend Last update: Thursday, May 14, 2009
Dental Health
Children in Scotland have substantially higher levels of recorded decay compared with other European countries.
The overall estimate of obvious decay experience in 5 year olds in Scotland is 1.86 teeth per child in 2007/08. This is an improvement on the figures of 2.18 and 2.36 found in the 2005/2006 and 2003/2004 surveys respectively. It is higher than the corresponding value recorded in 2003 for England (1.5), but slightly lower than that recorded for Wales (1.9).
The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator with the target that 60% of primary 1 children will have no signs of dental disease by 2010.
Latest figures, for the school year 2007/08, show 57.7% of Scottish five year olds with no obvious decay experience. This is an improvement compared with 54.1% in 2005/06 and 50.7% in 2003/04. However the situation varies across Scotland, with the least deprived areas already meeting the target of 60% and much higher levels of decay in the most deprived areas.
View chart data
Sources: 1987/88-1999/00 SHBDEP (Scottish Health Boards' Dental Epidemiological Programme)
2002/03-2005/06 NDIP (National Dental Inspection Programme)
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