Bei schulischer Krankheit ist ein Nachweis über Regelschmerzen erforderlich

Times have changed, it used to just be an excuse to get out of PE.

Tell me this rule was thought up by a man, without telling me this was thought up by a man.

Even if you don’t have any medical issues relating to your uterus (and it’s so difficult to get diagnosed for anything relating to your uterus, believe me I know), some months can be more painful than others. That’s the ‘fun’ of having a period!

And ‘unauthorised absence’ if you have a cold? Did they learn nothing from covid? So they want students to go in and spread colds to everyone?

Well, if this requirement leads to more girls and women who have endometriosis actually getting diagnosed earlier on, then I’m all for it.

Unfortunately, with the way the healthcare system already tends to ignore this kind of pain, I think it will have the opposite effect and will just lead to period pain being taken even less seriously.

I’ve got diagnosed endometriosis and adenomyosis and as a grown ass woman it was hard enough to get my GP to take that pain seriously so good luck to anyone who needs to jump through this hoop.

I understand that no school wants a student off for a few days every month, when they have their period.
However, including ‘period pains’ in other vague terms such as ‘poorly’ and ‘unwell’ highlights how medical gaslighting of females does occur. 

A woman under 18 is highly unlikely to already have an established diagnosis of endometriosis or PCOS, both which can cause excruciatingly painful periods. It’s well researched that women fight many years for such diagnoses, often not getting diagnosed until mid thirties.

Medical gaslighting in women is very real, often conditions such as menopause, post natal depression, PMDD, PTSD from birth trauma to name a few. 

How can you prove pain? What do they want, a bloody tampon enclosed in an envelope? 
I would hope that if a female student reports extreme pain when on their periods, they can be trusted (along with their parents) to be taken seriously and not invalidated and told to come to school anyway. 

They’re just going to get a lot of children sick with “violent diarrhoea”

I’m getting really fucking sick of the way schools treat kids. It’s like they expect more from the children than they do adults.

As a single guy with no relevant personal agenda, fuck this.

Attendance has become a mania for schools and they find it easier to target the well meaning students than the persistent absentees and those with difficult parents.

It all seems so inconsistent. They will use scare tactics on those taking a few sick days to try to get them to come in when actually ill and they won’t be in a fit state to do work and risk infecting others. Like with the stories of fines for parents taking the children on holiday in term time, I’ve never actually seen a fine issued to any parent, least of all those with kids missing days all over the place that accumulates into months of poorly explained absence.

I’ve seen students with appalling attendance rates or frequently late, arriving mid morning, where it’s known the parent(s) are alcoholic or just can’t be arsed, and not getting their kid off to school in the morning or the kid needs to care for them (or is acting as the parent for their younger siblings). And it just persists for years, but while they’re treated as a lost cause, other students are picked out to add a fraction of % onto the attendance stats.

I made a comment in this sub a few weeks ago about how education regarding periods should be more informative and widespread. Even as women there are things about our periods that we are told are normal and they absolutely are not.

Since I was 13, I have suffered with period pains so bad and so heavy that I genuinely cannot get out of bed because the pain is so crippling, and I risk bleeding on clothing and furniture. Many times I have thrown up from how much pain I’ve been in.
I am 26 now and was told this was normal up until 2 years ago when I was diagnosed with PCOS, a diagnosis that I had to fight tooth and nail for because surprise surprise, the GP receptionist told me what I was going through was not concerning.

There is no way to really prove how much pain you’re in, and schools shouldn’t think they should be entitled to a students private medical records. The attitude towards menstrual cycles infuriates me.

Bloody hell, I remember starting my period (which it hurts more the first few times and I didnt have my pcos diagnosed and I was also malnourished/anemic at the time due to my mothers neglect), so everytime I had a period it was hell, I couldn’t concentrate on the lessons when in pain anyway let alone bleeding through clothes because we wernt allowed to go to the toilets at certain times.

I remember one day I was stubborn towards a pe teacher, I was in too much pain to perform their routines, she said I was fine.. I do not want to be jumping on a trampoline with blood squirting out of me and my pad having a bloody party around! Ridiculous. I used to just skive school eventually.. I think I got detention for refusing to jump around that day too..

I was recently asked for proof that my child was attending fracture clinic for an injury obtained whilst at school. The kid was not going to miss either morning or afternoon registration, just a couple of hours to drive to the hospital, have the appointment and come back again. In this case they knew the details of the injury because it happened at school but it did feel quite excessive to me.

The school should have to pay for the proof, given they’re the ones requesting it.

I remember spraining my ankle badly during the winter when the pavement was very icy, and my secondary school giving me grief regarding not coming in. Head of Year told me I’d be in serious trouble (and so would my parents) unless I got same-day evidence. I hobbled down to my GP and she wrote me a letter for free, despite it usually costing £20. She made it clear in the letter that the school would need to pay for future requests like this.

Lo and behold, once this was imparted to them, any threats related to sickness-related absences stopped being uttered.

Schools are under a lot of pressure to improve attendance, and bad attendance can mean an Ofsted fail.

Yet attendance is almost entirely outside of their control.

As an admin for a home ed group, I know for a fact that ridiculous policies like this that are aimed at attendance over humanity have parents looking into home ed for their children; parents of children with conditions that need hospital treatment, parents of children who take time off every month because they might have endometriosis but are awaiting a diagnosis, parents of children who have debilitating migraines, parents of neurodiverse children who struggle in the system.

The number of enquires we’re getting to see if home ed is a possibility because parents are worried about being fined because their children have medical needs is astounding.

The home ed rates are going up in line with the implementation of policies which don’t treat children as human beings – and we know that there are problems with the school system as it is already that can exacerbate mental health issues, never mind this added pressure to always be in attendance. The Department of Education KNOWS this but they still allow schools to put in place policies like this.

I say it frequently – make schools somewhere children want to be and home ed rates will fall. Continue to play silly beggers like this, and they’ll continue to rise (which is why they’re now going with the frankly useless and money wasting “Children Not in School Register” because they can’t admit that they’re getting it wrong).

Schools are ran by morons.

My daughter has a very painful condition (pancreatitis). School says she needs a sick not from the doctors at the hospital if she’s ill. Doctors say keep her home and manage pain with meds unless she’s vomiting (which she normally isn’t).

So shall we send her to school? They sure think we should. As long as it’s with no pain meds, TENS machine, heat-packs or anything else that helps her manage her pain just in case another kid touches it.

So we send her to school, to suffer for six hours because other snot nosed kids might touch what’s not theirs all so your ofsted report looks better?

And then be threatened with children’s services over her attendance. 😆

Didn’t read the article, so maybe this has been answered, but prove it how?

Take your used sanitary pads and throw them into their face. Is that proof enough?

I’m lucky my Dad was a gynaecologist! But seriously this is ridiculous. I also work in women’s health and the first eight years of your periods are known to be usually the worst, unpredictable and more painful. Hell even my ovulation pain in my teens could completely floor me in agony. This rule is horribly misogynistic and is teaching again women and girls that their problems are less and they have to prove it’s an issue. Most girls are not going to use this as an excuse, heck they will be too embarrassed to tell their parents most of the time that they are suffering unless they are really suffering. I really don’t like this, makes me feel very uncomfortable that we expect girls to prove they were off sick for that reason.