What makes a young person not want to go to school? Feelings of academic inadequacy? A tempestuous relationship with one of their teachers? Bullying?

Those are the most obvious answers, yet it wasn’t until I saw the results of a comprehensive survey of more than 30,000 children and teenagers, conducted by a local authority in the south of England last year, that I began to think outside the box. The survey showed that, astonishingly, 16 per cent of under-16s surveyed hated their school toilets to the extent that they would never, ever use them.

It wasn’t clear why they felt this way: whether it was a perceived lack of cleanliness of whether they believed themselves unsafe in the loo for some reason. But the findings had obvious implications for all kinds of things, including concentration and willingness to engage in after-school clubs.

That’s the thing about pupils - there is so much that might impact their school performance outside their natural academic abilities and the quality of the teaching they receive. It seems tragic to me that a young person might look back on their education and reflect that they didn’t get the most out of it because of something so relatively fixable as a toilet (although I appreciate, of course, that the financial situations some schools find themselves in mean that even toilet refurbs are an impossibility).

So when a news story broke in March this year showing that girls from low-income families were skipping school because of so-called ‘period poverty’, it got me thinking.

The nature of my job, as someone who travels the UK delivering talks on mental health, body image and gender equality, means I usually only get one hour of a young person’s academic life to make an impression on them. I’ve always been hyper-aware of this, knowing that my role isn’t to provide all the answers, but to kick-start a conversation, to challenge conventional ways of thinking and to hopefully leave a lasting impression.

It’s why I spend a disproportionate amount of time kicking myself if I have an “off day” (which, as you can imagine, when combined with the magnifying qualities of my anxiety disorder, makes for a *super* fun week in my house).

It strikes me as many things: sad, ludicrous and an unfortunate indictment on the world in which we live that I might miss my one chance ever to meet a young woman in her school because she was on her period, that day.

‘A heinous problem requiring urgent attention’

Why is this happening? A police officer in Leeds reported that many girls were missing school because they could not afford to buy products during their menstrual cycle, sparking a funding appeal for UK-wide research. Sara Barrie, who is safer schools officer for West Yorkshire Police, went on to tell The Independent that she’d witnessed many girls having to rely on their teachers to provide them with sanitary products.  

This is, obviously, a heinous problem requiring urgent attention (now we’re out of the European Union, presumably we can, at last, acknowledge that sanitary products are not a “luxury” and dispense with the tax on them? It might be the one silver lining). Yet speaking to my colleagues at the Self-Esteem Team (SET), we reached the conclusion that the problem runs deeper.

Between the three of us, SET co-founders Grace, Nadz and I visit about six schools every single week, in areas which differ enormously in terms of affluence, in both the state and independent sector. What we have observed is a stigma surrounding anything biologically female, which has a noticeable impact on girls when attempting to negotiate their education - particularly when dealing with their period.

We have been to a highly affluent boarding school where the housemistress had to jump in and do some emergency PSHE lessons on nutrition after girls were fainting during class because of what transpired (after much coaxing) to be the result of a lack of iron during their periods.

We have visited a primary school where parents wrote letters of complaint in their droves to the Year 6 teacher, incensed because she had taught them the word clitoris and its meaning (after having apparently been totally unconcerned a few years previously, when they learned the word penis).

We have been to secondary schools where any girl who voices an opinion, or challenges sexism, is taunted relentlessly by her male classmates, being told she must have the “mean reds” and should, therefore, shut up. And in a world where the reproductive, biological and sexual education of a whole generation of teens comes predominantly not from their parents, peers, or the classroom, but from the pornography 97 per cent of them will statistically be accessing regularly by the time they reach 16, something has to be done.

Change in motion

Having said that, of course, we didn’t want to burden teachers with yet another thing to add to their ever-burgeoning to-do lists. If my decade-long career in the education sector has taught me anything, it’s that if you’re about to start a sentence with the words ‘schools must...’, don’t.

That’s why, when we were approached by BodyForm and asked to work on a schools-based project to tackle period stigma, we leapt at the chance. Together, we have created YouTube video resources which will be released in the new academic year and can be used freely by schools. They tackle exercise, nutrition and myths around periods.

Not only that, SET have created a special lesson on periods and confidence which, along with sanitary products supplied by BodyForm, we’ll be taking into schools in economically deprived areas totally free of charge throughout the month of September.

With the government’s continued refusal to make PHSE mandatory, as well as the vicious cuts to school funding, problems like this can easily be pushed to the bottom of the agenda. Yet our experience has taught us that by empowering young women not to be ashamed of their period, we will be giving them a tangible advantage in their education.

It’s about bloody time this issue was tackled.

If your school wants to apply for our free lessons, email aboutbloodytime@myriadpr.com. In the meantime, get involved in the conversation online using the hashtag #aboutbloodytime. To find out more about the Self-Esteem Team, visit selfesteemteam.org. 

Natasha Devon is the former UK government mental health champion for schools and founder of the Body Gossip Education Programme and the Self-Esteem Team. She tweets as @_NatashaDevon.

For more columns by Natasha, visit her back catalogue.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow Tes on Twitter and like Tes on Facebook.