Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the oral contribution of the Minister for Women of 22 February 2018, Official Report, column 328, when he plans to publish his assessment of the effect of period poverty on school absence rates; and if he will make a statement.

We have produced additional analysis of our absence data to look for evidence of period poverty by reviewing variations in absence rates by age, gender and free school meal status. We plan to publish our findings shortly. Information on the department’s pre-announced ad hoc statistics publications can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education/about/statistics#contents.