Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of school absences caused by girls’ inability to access free sanitary products.

The Department for Education collects information on absence through the termly school census. The department collects data on the number of possible sessions, number of authorised absences, number of unauthorised absences and the reason for absence for each pupil. The reasons for absence do not include a category which would enable sessions missed due to a lack of access to menstrual products to be identified. The method of data collection does not enable us to identify pupils who are routinely missing school as we collect information on the total sessions missed each term. Full details of the absence data we collect in school census can be found in the census guidance here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-census.

We are committed to ensuring that any action to address absence is based on robust evidence. We have sought to establish whether there has been any rigorous national assessment of the prevalence of period poverty or its impact on attendance, however none appears available. We reached out to school stakeholders in July 2017 through the Association of School and College Leaders forum asking for contributions on the issue and have received a very limited response. We are producing additional analysis of our absence data to look for evidence of period poverty and will publish findings in due course.

We have made it a priority to reduce school absence for all pupils and there has been some notable success in this area, with overall yearly absence rates decreasing from 6.5% of possible sessions missed in 2006/7 to 4.6% in 2015/16.