It has come to light over the last few years that girls are missing school because they cannot afford sanitary products, a phrase that has been coined, ‘period poverty’ affecting girls of all school ages. The free sanitary product scheme is due to be announced by Philip Hammond during the Spring statement this week and this initiative will be fully active from September 2019, being funded by the treasury.
The scheme is the product of two years of campaigning, started by Amika George, naming the campaign #FreePeriods, ‘This is a victory for everyone who has been campaigning to eradicate period poverty in schools,’ Amika continues with periods, ‘should never hold back a child for achieving their true potential…we will now see menstrual products available for free in all English secondary schools.
According to children’s charity Plan International UK, one in ten women aged between fourteen and twenty-one are unable to afford any sanitary products and almost half of the girls in the UK have missed an entire day of school due to their period. Scotland recently announced a similar scheme which England is now expected to ‘mirror,’ and although the costing in England is not known, Scotland reported it would cost them £5.2 million to ‘banish the scourge of period poverty.’
