Co-designing the menstrual education curriculum with the Department for Education SA
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Up until now, students in the public schooling system have not been receiving sufficient education surrounding menstruation.
Enter, the Period Justice Working Group. A major player in the field of Period Justice, and an initiative from the Commissioner for Children and Young People SA, which is focused on bettering the awareness, education, and resources around periods for young people in South Australia.
Joining this group following the Youth Period Summit last year was an action I took to continue challenging the stigma and lack of knowledge surrounding menstruation. Through being a part of this group, I have met many like-minded individuals who are passionate about fighting injustice. With all our members being young people aged 22 and under, we meet monthly, working most recently on co-designing the menstrual education curriculum with the South Australian Department for Education. This co-design has come from understanding that the current curriculum for students in years 3 to 10 is not providing sufficient, up-to-date education on periods.
A recent study done by researchers at Flinders University shows that children are getting their periods as early as 8 years old in some cases, stating that “approximately 12% of Australian girls reach menarche between eight to eleven years” (Olivia M. Bellas et al 2023). The education around periods - what a period is, how to use products, and being aware of related diseases such as endometriosis, is no use if the students are already menstruating. They need to know this information before they begin menstruating so that they can be supported and better prepared for when they get their periods.
The redesigning of the curriculum has allowed us to tailor the way the content is taught depending on the age of the students, the relevance in parallel to what their bodies are going through, and the area of curriculum in which it’s delivered. This is essential to ensuring a better future for coming generations, to provide them with the knowledge they need to support themselves and each other.
The process of co-designing this curriculum has been very inspiring to be actively making a change on a larger scale. We all want to make the education system more effective and for students to receive supportive, accurate, relevant information on matters that concern them.
No one should be denied the right to menstrual education - regardless of whether students menstruate or not, being aware of how our bodies function and what our peers go through is a vital part of learning about health and being knowledgeable on topics that affect everyone. By looking at different parts of the current period education content, particularly that which is intersected with the teaching of health and physical education, we were able to see the major gaps where the curriculum was very vague in addressing all areas that surround this topic. Over multiple meetings, we analysed the current curriculum, critiquing and making adjustments, before then producing an updated draft which went through more editing and tweaking, working together to understand the key concepts that were essential and adding crucially relevant content that was previously absent.
Working with the Department for Education to re-design this curriculum has been very rewarding, knowing that students after us will have far better knowledge on periods and that through this, the stigma and taboo culture of menstruation will break down.
References
Olivia M. Bellas, Monique A. Mulholland, Nina Sivertsen, Emma Kemp, Ivanka Prichard, Stefania Velardo, Jessica Shipman, 11 November 2023, Staff perceptions of support for early menarche in Australian primary schools: a qualitative study, https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2023.2275595, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2023.2275595