Parents are up in arms about a Cambridge school’s new sickness policy, which is demanding a doctor’s note if children stay at home due to period pain.
Neale-Wade Academy says it is no longer accepting explanations such as “ill, unwell, poorly, has a cold or periods pains” to authorise student absences, and pupils would need “related medical information”.
I’m sorry – have we gone back to life in Victorian England when women were accused of hysteria and the uterus was thought to wander round the female body causing irritability? Because if so, mine's wandering all over the place right now.
Even a century later, women’s health is still like an undiscovered continent – and change will only start by believing girls at school when they say they’re ill.
Quite apart from the fact one in 10 teenage girls suffers from endometriosis – which you won’t see scrawled in a GP’s letter as it usually takes up to 10 years to be diagnosed – is there any other circumstance where a bleeding student has to prove that it really hurts?
Rather than solve some of the underlying problems behind the school absence epidemic, this government says it’s taking a firm line.
Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson tweeted at the beginning of the summer term: “I make no apologies for saying the best place for children is in school. This week is back-to-school week, not just for some children, but ALL children.”
And since then, the gloves have been metaphorically taken off by schools under pressure to reduce sickness days – even if it means threatening unwell children and their worried parents. In its new government guidance, absences need to be covered by a doctor’s note – only you’d have to have a limb hanging off before you get access to a GP.
Absence fines have gone up to £80 if paid within 21 days, or £160 if paid within 28 days. After that there’s prison, as some schools are sending police to the homes of children who are persistently absent. Once again ignoring the many reasons behind it, including mental health problems, unmet special educational needs, or, in the cases of some children at my daughter’s school – Long Covid and autoimmune diseases.
I know teens like mine are prone to be drama llamas over every little thing from breathing at them the wrong way, and some girls do fake period pains to get out of class. I remember the odd girl at school would try to embarrass the male teacher by saying: “Sir, I’ve got my period, sir.” And she’d be waved out the classroom quickly so could nip out for a crafty B&H behind the PE hall.
But for many teenage girls, periods are a monthly misery. Not only does it affect school attendance and performance in exams, but it can hold them back in sports and their careers.
My ultramarathon runner friend Marie-Lou has to complete the same mountain course as the blokes – usually with her period (they always start at the beginning of a holiday or race). And because they’re all leave-no-trace events, it means she has to bag them up and run with them while in pain.
Then there are those girls whose periods are absolutely debilitating – with nausea, fainting and severe blood loss – with their GPs normalising symptoms as if they’re “light cramping”.
Minimising “wimmin’s issues” has led to generations of women suffering with undiagnosed PCOS and endometriosis for decades, and medical science thinking women are just small men.
Have schools learned nothing?
