Free period products made available in all ACT public schools

Free and easily accessible period product dispensers installed in all ACT public school bathrooms All ACT public school students will now be able to access free period products without having to ask, following lobbying from Canberra students. The initiative, which aims to end period poverty, provides free pads and tampons via dispensers in all public primary school, high school, and college bathrooms. The program started as a pitch from a group of Canberra High School students at an International Women's Day conference in 2021. A pilot of the program ran at the school for a year, and formed part of a report to the education minister about the value of making menstrual products readily available and accessible to students. Last year, the ACT government said they were now accessible in more than 30 schools, and that has since been expanded to include every school in the territory. But a key element of the program is that they are easily accessible. Removing the 'awkward' task of asking The ACT became the first jurisdiction in Australia to guarantee access to free period products in 2023, but the program includes the caveat that those free pads and tampons should be available without having to ask. Year 9 Canberra High School student Emily Duffy said having dispensers in bathrooms that can be accessed at any time has been "a really good safety net". "They've always been there for me in my time at high school, but [before] you'd have to go to the front office, or you could ask a friend," Ms Duffy said. "And obviously for some people it's very awkward and scary, a bit daunting maybe. "[So] it's really good to just have those and not need to ask anyone." Fellow Year 9 student Flick Hearne agreed the dispensers "definitely made it a lot less awkward" for students to access free menstrual products when they need them. "My friends have all said good things about it," Ms Hearne said. "I haven't actually heard a negative thing about it at all." Canberra High School's executive teacher of science, Laura Gibbs, was one of the teachers involved in the event where the idea was first pitched in 2021. She said the dispensers were being regularly refilled, with some students taking multiple products for use outside school as well as while in class. "A lot of them are also taking them home because they don't have access at home — or they're taking them home for parents, for friends, for other family members," Ms Gibbs said. "I knew that period poverty was a thing, but it wasn't until these students made me aware of it, that [I realised] it was such a big thing here at our school. "I thought we were somewhat sheltered from that, but we went from 33 per cent of students having missed at least one day of school because of period poverty down to three per cent after we installed the products. "For me, that just speaks for itself. Why would this not be available everywhere?" Ms Gibbs said despite period products being available for free in ACT public schools since 2023, the way students had to ask for them could be "humiliating". "So if you go to the bathroom, you realise before it's too late that you've got your period and you need something, you have to then MacGyver some kind of solution and then make your way to the front office and ask someone for a pad or a tampon," she said. "That is such a dehumanising experience that so many students have been through, so we really wanted to push for them being accessible." Ms Gibbs added that while the program's jurisdiction-wide expansion was "fantastic news", period education in ACT public schools remained "inadequate". "There needs to be more education for all students of all sexes about what periods are, to make them normal," she said. "There's a lot of gender division in how the education's done, I think we've got a lot of ways to go in that space. "But I think this is a great step forward to making that conversation more comfortable to then be able to have a lot more education around it."