School closures, Legal challenges to the CPS, Family Secrets
Woman's Hour
BBC
4.1 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson has confirmed that all schools will close in England and Wales and there’ll be no GCSE or A Level exams this summer. How are schools and pupils proposing to cope? Ruby is a 17-year old pupil in Somerset, due to take her A levels shortly. Charlie is 25 and is doing an access course to be a paramedic. It involves cramming 2 years of A-levels into 1 year. Carolyn Roberts is the Head Teacher at Thomas Tallis School in South London.
A legal challenge over alleged changes to Crown Prosecution Service policy on bringing charges in rape cases was dismissed by the high court this week. The Centre for Women’s Justice brought the case on behalf of the End Violence Against Women Coalition following concerns over steep falls in rape charges and convictions in recent years - at a time when an increasing number of women have been making rape complaints to police. Human rights lawyer, Harriet Wistrich, clarifies why the case was brought and someone we are calling Olivia explains why she wanted her case to be one of the 21 cases included as evidence.
The writer Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. The things we cherish aren’t always vintage, or even antique - or even expensive. The TV presenter and chef Andi Oliver talks about a one-of-a-kind blanket knitted by her mother.
And in today’s family secret is that of a woman we are calling ‘H’ whose whole life has been shaped by the sense that there was something she wasn’t being told. Finding out the truth at the age of 17 at a family party and the realisation that everyone else in the family knew all along made her ill. H tells Jo Morris her story.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.9 | Hello, Jenny Murray, welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday, the 19th |
| 0:09.8 | of March. |
| 0:10.8 | Earlier in the week, a challenge was made in the High Court to the way the Crown Prosecution |
| 0:16.0 | Service decides on whether a claim of rape will go to court or not. |
| 0:20.8 | The campaigners lost. |
| 0:22.6 | Why? |
| 0:23.6 | And where do they go now? |
| 0:26.0 | It's that matter, even if they have no monetary value today. |
| 0:30.3 | And the Oliver describes a blanket made by her mother. |
| 0:34.2 | And the last in our series of family secrets, a woman who became ill because she suspected |
| 0:39.5 | a secret which everyone else in the family knew. |
| 0:43.1 | Now, there will be some children this morning who are dancing with delight at the thought |
| 0:48.5 | of no school and no exams. |
| 0:51.4 | Others will be deeply anxious about having to stay at home and not being able to put |
| 0:55.9 | all their hard work and revision to the test. |
| 0:58.8 | Then there will be parents worried about work, childcare and their child's future prospects. |
| 1:05.4 | This morning, the Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson confirmed that all schools |
| 1:10.4 | will close in England and Wales and there will be no exams. |
| 1:15.4 | I've looked through every single option and every single option is so much less good |
| 1:21.5 | than the exam process that we would usually be going through. |
| 1:25.2 | But we are not going to be in a position where we, with confidence, were able to run a |
... |
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