Woman's Hour - Dr Kirsty Sedgman, Esther Webber, Jenny Symmons, Elaine Dunkley, Nadine Benjamin

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Who gets to decide about social norms, about what's reasonable and unreasonable behaviour? Is it OK to breastfeed in public, to let your children play in the garden while others are working from home? Can we come together and talk about these things reasonably? According to Dr Kirsty Sedgman, the author of a new book, On being Unreasonable: Breaking the rules and making things better, we're living in an age of division. If she asks, we reimagined the rules of public togetherness, what would get better? What would change for the worse? And for whom?As MPs return to parliament today, they come back to a new set of proposals by the Standards Committee. It has recently published a report recommending that MPs arrested for serious offences should be banned from the parliamentary estate. We discuss with Esther Webber, Senior UK Correspondent for Politico, and Westminster parliamentary aide and GMB representative Jenny Symmons .Half of state-funded schools in England for children with special educational needs and disabilities are oversubscribed, new BBC research has found. Schools have been forced to convert portable cabins and even cupboards into teaching spaces due to a lack of space. Head teachers say this puts pressure on staff and makes pupils anxious. Parents say their children are missing education while they wait for places. BBC correspondent Elaine Dunkley who has led the investigation and produced an Iplayer documentary, ‘SEND help’, explains how this situation has arisen.Nadine Benjamin MBE is a celebrated Soprano. But if it wasn’t for the words of an encouraging high school music teacher, she would never have considered a career in Opera. Now, she’s played in the UK’s most prestigious Opera Houses in shows including La Bohème, Madama Butterfly and the Marriage of Figaro. Last year she performed for the new King. Nadine joins Nuala to talk about her journey into the industry and performs from Songs of Joy which brings together stories told through song and spoken word, celebrating the lived experiences of black and mixed-race composers.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio Manager: Giles Aspen

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Good to have you with us this Monday morning. There is a BBC investigation that we're going to look at today. It is found that half of state-funded schools in England for children with special educational needs and disabilities are oversubscribed. The BBC's Elaine Dunkley has been looking into the issues that are facing parents that are looking for help for their children.

She'll be with us. We'll also be joined by a parent and a headteacher who are immersed in the difficulties day to day. If that's something that resonates with you, I want to hear from you today. You can text the programme. The number is 84844 or on social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. Another way is the WhatsApp message or voice note. And that number is 03700 100 444. Another question for you. You might want to get in touch on this one.

Do you consider yourself a reasonable person? Here's a couple of questions for you. How do you feel about women putting makeup on on public transport? What about reclining your seat on a plane? Or the person in front of you doing it? What about that? And what is a reasonable compromise

when it comes to a difference in opinion on how we behave? And I'm thinking even larger societal issues here as well. How do we define reasonable? Can we even agree on that? Well, my guest today is Kirsty Sedgman and she is calling

for what might be termed being unreasonable. Her aim, she says, is making things better for everyone. So stay with us for that discussion. It's coming up. Text the programme 84844. And also, remember the term Pessminster? It referred to the sexual harassment at Westminster,

which led to repeated calls for reform. Now, there are a new set of proposals that would ban MPs charged with violent or sexual offences from setting foot in the House of Commons. We'll speak about how likely they are to be adopted with a political reporter and also about other measures that my guest from the GMB union believes are needed to keep employees safe. So that is all coming up. But before that, I want to talk about the golfer Tiger Woods. He has faced criticism for handing a tampon to his playing partner, Justin Thomas, after outdriving him

during the Genesis Invitational. So it's a golf tournament in LA last week. Now, the 47-year-old placed the tampon in Thomas's hand discreetly, I think he thought, as he walked off the ninth tee. But if you watch the video of the incidents, you'll see Thomas laughs and almost immediately drops the

tampon to the floor. And of course, there was cameras everywhere, you can imagine. So it was picked up all around the world. So Woods has faced criticism on social media from Manny and the golf world. I did see the Sky Sports presenter, Sarah Sturck, she called it crass, extremely disappointing. Woods has apologised.

This is what he said. If I offended anybody in any way, shape or form, I'm sorry, it was not intended to be that way. We play pranks on one another all the time. And virally, I think this did not come across that way, but between us, it's different. How do you feel about that apology? Well, joining me now is the former

professional golfer and presenter sophie walker currently covering the ladies european tour in saudi arabia sophie how did this go down where you are well luckily many of the players are out on the golf course when when this happened and and on the ground it was just oh like silly boys uh we're at an event which is equal pay to the men's equivalent playing for five million dollars it's the biggest event ever on the ladies european tour and yet here i am talking about tiger woods handing a tampon to his friend it's just disappointing really because we want to be champion championing the things are going right in the women's game um and tiger is he's a significant person in golf he is the the guy that everybody watches and i mean how he didn't know that he was going to be on camera

this guy's grown up in front of the cameras for me he's in his workplace inside the ropes and he just shouldn't be doing that how do you understand it um because even the first time people saw it i think they're like hang on what what does he mean by that why is he handing a tampon did you immediately get what he was trying to, what the prank was supposed to be? How do you understand it? Yeah, I, first of all, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was a meme on Instagram. And I'm thinking like, oh, what's happened?

Somebody obviously just put tampon in the photo. And then I realised that, that this is this is actually what he's done so the only way I can see it like everybody else is he's waited for Justin Thomas to hit the ball shorter than him in distance off the tee and as that happens he's then gone up to and handed him a tampon which suggests to me that you hit it like a girl and i've outdriven you um what i just can't understand is this is his first event back in six eight months it's a huge deal and he's premeditated by putting a tampon in his pocket you know as a woman i have a tampon in my golf bag all the time I just don't think he does

he's waited to do that uh yeah it's just like childish I mean he describes it as kind of locker room banter which to them it is and if you want to do it behind closed doors fine but don't do it in the public eye but is it okay to behind closed doors? That's another question but I want to read some of the comments that are coming in. John says there seems to be a total sense of humour failure with the Tiger Woods tampon prank get a life people so siding with Tiger

there. Instead another guy John says I'd be concerned that he had it on him in the first place. I'm sure it was some sort of in joke but it's pretty odd for it to happen in public. I should say also, we do have a poll on the At BBC Women's Hour Instagram account. So far, 84% who have responded

says it is disrespectful to women, not a joke. And I suppose, Sophie, what I'm wondering is, do you feel women players sometimes being considered less than, which I think people are interpreting this tampon prank to be? Yeah, I do get the impression that we are less than and we're always striving for better facilities, more prize money, more recognition on television.

Absolutely, that's what we want. And when you see, like I said, he moves the needle in golf. He's the Roger Federer of golf. He's the Michael Jordan of golf. And we hold him at a higher level than anybody else. And Tiger's got a 15-year-old daughter called Sam. And, you know, I just think she was going, Dad, what are you doing?

Like, you spoke about 70s humour. I mean, this guy is 47 years old. Like, he is showing his age in that sense. Like, I'm hoping the world's moved on. It's just a shame that Tiger hasn't in his sense. I'm hoping the world's moved on. It's just a shame that Tiger hasn't in his sense of humour. Has he, if it's possible to know, ever been considered an ally for women in golf?

Because this past decade has been so important, I think, for women's golf. You know, it's really gone on to a completely different level than where we were a decade ago. Yeah, I mean, there's noticeable people that have mentioned about supporting the women's. Justin Rose has his own series for the women,

and that's been great. Tommy Fleetwood's spoken out. I mean, we've seen Tiger Woods go and support Serena Williams at US Open Championships in tennis. But in golf, it might be nice for him to make amends, in all fairness, and say, look, I'm going to do this and I'm going to support some form of women's golf to make amends because I'm sure he understands

that his actions, no matter good or bad will always be picked up um as I say like like Sarah Sturck said it's disappointing it is a crass joke and yes he's apologized and we move on but I'd like to see him make a little bit of amends because he has the power to do that his voice is the most important voice in golf so that would be maybe if I'm hearing from you correctly uh the appropriate response for him to come out in some way more forcefully for women's golf yeah I think so and not you know not maybe just on the back of what happened at the weekend. He's got a great foundation, like Tiger Woods has a foundation that does a lot, a lot for people. But maybe just, you know, come out in the next few months and maybe turn up at a women's golf event, which is local to him or just show any form of support on Twitter and Instagram. It does mean the world when he speaks out. So that's kind of what I would like to see from him personally.

Well, thank you so much for coming on, Sophie. I think I can say game on with Tiger Woods. Let's see if he takes you up on your challenge in the next few months. And great also to hear how women's golf is coming on, even if people are seeing this as a setback. Let me see, Christine Puro, the level of a 14-year-old boy.

Grow a thicker skin, says Boris. I've had to endure enough hen parties travelling on flights around Europe with waving condoms around, women waving condoms around, but you never mentioned those. Well, I just have. Let me see.

Claire says, I'd love to know the sentiment behind this. At face value, it appears to be the joke is based on him having some womanly attributes. If that's the case, it was poor taste to do it publicly. It's the locker room humour

that women have had to endure for an age. Right. We do have the poll, as I mentioned, on the BBC Woman's Hour Instagram account. But I want to thank Sophie Walker, who's currently covering the Ladies of the European Tour in Saudi Arabia. Right, I want to move on

now to Pessminster. Remember that word? Well, as MPs are returning to Parliament today, they're going to be coming back to a new set of proposals. This is by the Standards Committee. It's recently published a report recommending that MPs are returning to Parliament today. They're going to be coming back to a new set of proposals. This is by the Standards Committee. It's recently published a report recommending that MPs arrested for serious offences, such as violent or sexual offences, should be banned from the parliamentary estate.

So the whole area, geographical area where the House of Commons and other buildings are. And this is a response to a recent House of Commons Commission consultation. Now, you may have heard to headlines referring to Pessminster, this term nickname, in the past few years, as MPs across party lines have been convicted of, suspended or put under investigation. And it was all for sexual misconduct. To discuss it further, I have two guests with me this morning. Esther Weber, senior UK correspondent for Politico. Good morning, Esther. Good morning. Also with me in studio is Jenny Simmons

from the GMB Union who works in the House of Commons as a parliamentary aid and also represents the interests of members there. Good morning. Good morning, Nita. So Esther, let's go back to these proposals. What was the thing that struck you the most that our listeners need to know?

So this has been sort of bubbling under for a while, that trade unions and staff in Parliament have been asking for enhanced protections when an MP is accused of serious wrongdoing and the House of Commons Commission, which is the managing body of the Commons, has come forward with these proposals which would mean that an MP charged with a serious crime, so a sexual or a violent crime, could be banned from the parliamentary estate

whereas at the moment all they can do is volunteer to stay away so it's formalising that arrangement and I think as we'll probably go on to discuss the idea of it being from the point of charge is seen as maybe too high a bar by some people involved. It's an interesting one. What about that, Jenny? I see you nodding. Yeah, I think Esther's completely right on the whole leaving it until the point of charge proposed or before considering precautionary exclusion. A lot of our members believe that this the consideration doing a risk assessment should happen much earlier much sooner in the process because we don't really see the value in precautionary measures if the threat is allowed to get as far as charge. So we agree with the

Standards Committee proposal that this should happen at the point of arrest for a sexual violent crime. I suppose one of the issues there's a couple of them that that have been pushed back against this esther for example does exclusion if it were to happen at that point then infer guilt um where at this point there has been an arrest but no guilt that has been confirmed? I think certainly that is a concern that has been raised particularly by MPs but there was also evidence taken during the Standards Committee's examination of this where they heard from other professions like the clergy and also the judiciary, and they talked about arrangements that they have for suspending someone where that isn't taken to infer guilt.

It's just about protecting the people who that individual works with. But clearly this is a really sensitive part of the conversation and something MPs believe needs to be really put at the centre of this whole plan. Yes, yes, indeed. The other aspect that people were concerned about, MPs,

would constituents still have the representation that they deserve if, in fact, you don't have that Member of Parliament within the parliamentary estate? Yeah, that is also a concern that has been put quite forcefully by MPs because obviously there is an assumption that nothing should interfere with someone's right to be represented in Parliament by their MP. But I think what's worth bearing in mind is we obviously have talked about pessimists and how there is a recurring problem with sexual harassment in Parliament. But in order to get to the point of even arrest is still very, very unusual.

And I think that should just be borne in mind that a criminal case is still quite rare. I understand. Well, let me throw it back to you, Jenny, because you mentioned the proposals there, some of the aspects that you agree with, but some of them you even want to go further. Yeah, we do.

I think, like we said, we want to go further than what the original consultation is proposing, which is leaving it until the point of charge to exclude someone. But we also, within the GMB branch for MP staff, we often work with people who've made complaints through the ICGS, which is the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme,

which is available for anyone who works on the parliamentary estate or works in a constituency office. And often there'll be cases of sexual misconduct, which will go through the ICGS but not go to the police. At the moment they're not considered in this consultation there is no mechanism within the icgs to do a risk assessment of whether someone might be a safeguarding risk to staff on the estate that's left until once a case has concluded which can take one to two years so recently we had the

case i think before christmas of chris matheson former mp for chester who had the case, I think before Christmas, of Chris Matheson, former MP for Chester, who had a case against him for sexual misconduct and it was upheld. But it took 17 months for that case to be resolved. And during that whole time, he was able to attend Parliament, go into the bars, go in to see his constituency office staff, etc. So we believe that this precautionary exclusion policy needs to not just cover people who are going through the police process but also in internal disciplinary processes and with that though if it's not if if it were to go ahead that they're banned from the parliamentary state what about constituency offices we believe that it must cover constituency

offices as well so the the latest Common Standards report, that recommends that constituency office staff should be allowed to work from home so that they are kind of protected from a potential threat from their employer. We disagree with that. We think that all the restrictions should be placed on MPs and they should work from home only.

We did find during the pandemic that there were many ways for MPs to be able to carry out their duties at home. There should be accommodation for electronic voting, proxy voting. And frankly, I think some constituents, I mean, once it gets to the point where an MP is charged or when the ICGS uphelds a complaint, a serious complaint, sometimes then it does go to a recall petition and constituents have the opportunity to say this isn't a person that we want representing us in parliament speaking debates, we deserve to have someone who is not, you know, committed serious sexual assault or other crimes. There was one other aspect, Jenny, as well, which I hadn't thought about before. And

this is how people are employed, whether they're employed by an individual politician or politician's office, you would be looking for something different. Yes, so the GMB policy on this, we've kind of been leading a campaign for quite a long time to reform the employment of staff in Parliament. At the moment, there are 650 small businesses, so 650 MPs running their own offices, directly employing their own staff.

And they can make decisions within pay bands set, they make decisions how much their staff are paid, whether they can take time off, sick leave, all sorts of absence, they do all the HR. And if someone has a complaint, most of the time, they have to go to their MP first before going to the independent complaints and grievance scheme. So MPs exercise a huge amount of power over their staff. And we've seen that exploited time and time again, we have many MPs who are excellent employers and they're wonderful, but there are too many who bully their staff and harass them, keep them on kind of short-term contracts.

And we want to bring everyone in-house so we're overall employed by the House of Commons. And then we will have access to an HR department, which we don't at the moment. We'll be brought into line with the civil service. And it will also free up MPs to do more of their parliamentary duties rather than mean minor HR things. What do you think, Esther, the chances of that going through? So obviously, this is a sort of live proposal that's being debated at the moment. I have to say

there has been quite a lot of pushback on this from MPs of all parties who I think have so far tended to really value the idea of choosing their own staff and sort of guarding that process quite closely. So it will be interesting to see how those conversations continue. But yeah, there isn't a huge amount of buy-in from MPs at the moment. Just before I let you go, Jenny, has the culture improved? Not enough. And we do believe that the only way to improve it is to provide a buffer of safety for staff from their MPs by bringing in independent employments. MPs can still choose their staff, that's important to note,

but they just won't have all the employment responsibilities over us, which we think is needed to protect us. You think there needs to be a buffer between the MPs and the staff. Very interesting. Thank you very much to both of you for joining us. Esther Weber, Senior UK Correspondent for Politico, and Jenny Simmons from the GMB Union, but who works in the House of Commons, as I mentioned, as a parliamentary aide.

I do want to read a statement on the Commission proposals that came in to us, a House of Commons spokesperson saying, the Commission launched a consultation on excluding members charged with violent or sexual offences from the parliamentary estate

until any such cases are concluded. Ultimately, it will be for the whole House to decide on any such power. Details of the consultation were announced on the 5th of December and the Commission will be considering responses in due course. Interesting proposals put forward there.

84844. Let us know how you feel about that or any of the other issues that are coming in. Lots of comments. Let me see. I see one coming in. My son comments. Let me see. I see one coming in. My son's cricket teacher asked him last year

if he had his period after a poor match performance. He was 12 and didn't understand, but now might associate menstruation with playing badly. That's playing into our first story we were covering, which was Tiger Woods

and golf handing a tampon to his counterpart, Justin Thomas. I want to move on to an investigation. Maybe you saw a little of this this morning. You are sending in your stories on this as well. Thank you for that. Eight four, eight four four. Half of state funded schools in England for children with special educational needs and disabilities are oversubscribed.

And this is according to new research by the BBC. Schools have been forced to convert portable cabins, even cupboards, into teaching spaces due to a lack of space. Headteachers say this puts pressure on staff and also makes the pupils anxious. And the parents say their children are missing education while they wait for places

and really have to battle to try and get the right support for their children. BBC correspondent Elaine Dunkley is here with me and has led the investigation and produced a documentary called Send Help. It's available on the BBC iPlayer. I have to say I found it a very compelling watch. Good to have you with us, Elaine. Thank you for having me. Good morning. Well, let's start with what led you to investigate this. Yeah, so as an education correspondent, I focus on many of the pressures in schools. And when I sort of look at the pressures that are happening in mainstream schools, when you go to specialist schools, those pressures are often even more acute. So, for example, during the pandemic, there was a shortage of staff within schools.

And so schools were relying on supply staff. And so I went to a specialist school and they were saying, well, the problem's even worse here because when we go to supply agencies, we can't get specialist staff. And also having unfamiliar faces within the school is really disruptive, particularly for the children who are autistic. And the headteacher said to me, one of the problems that we've got is we've just got so many children.

We're cramped, we're overcrowded. And every term we're having to take on more and more pupils, and we've got no real control in terms of our admissions because if a child needs a place and there's nowhere else for them, then they have to come here. And so I rang around a couple of other specialist schools, spoke to headteachers, and they were also saying, yes, we're oversubscribed, we've got long waiting lists,

we've got a lot of pressure on staff, a lot of pressure on resources. And so myself and my producer, Kate McGough, started to look into this with the BBC's data team. And we looked at over 1,000 schools in England, and we found that 52% of them were oversubscribed. And it varies across the country. So in the North East, 60% of specialist schools are oversubscribed. Now, special educational needs schools, they work with the local authority to establish how many children they can support. But if there's a child that needs a place, then they're forced to take more children because there just isn't the provision locally. And is it that diagnosis has changed

in the sense, because I was wondering, wondering these numbers they were huge percentages that they had jumped in the past two or three years. So yes so within the past five years there are 42,000 more children with special educational needs in specialist schools. Now there is a number of issues for this there is just more demand there are more children who have been diagnosed with special educational needs and disabilities. There are more children with education and healthcare plans. Now this is a document which outlines the support a child should get and what we're finding is mainstream schools are really struggling. There are children now with more complex needs in mainstream schools and there isn't the staff, there aren't necessarily

the resources and what we're having is parents are sort of losing faith that their children are being fully supported in mainstream school. And so they're being pushed more towards specialist schools. And so you've got a real problem there where mainstream schools aren't able to support children enough. And then those children are not wanting to go to school. Many of those children are being put on part-time timetables because the school's finding them disruptive to the other children. Those children then don't want to engage in mainstream schools. And so you've got this problem which starts to really kind of escalate

to the point where parents are wanting their children to be in specialist education. A lot of stories coming in so far. Let me see, this is Gary, says, enormous reform needed in order to create a flourishing, affordable and legally compliant system. The government sends special educational needs and disabilities

and AP Green Paper at best only scratches the surface, at worst makes useful promises with few concrete proposals. As much as it needs more specialist places, the system always needs better and more formalised methods of sharing expertise from special, mainstream and enormous upskilling of the mainstream workforce. So saying that teachers need to receive more training and spend more time planning.

Let me see one more. We're in South East London. My daughter is in year one. It's been clear she had been in need of some additional SEND support, special educational needs support, for about a year. School have been amazing and referred her to CAMHS, which is for the mental health aspect, and we've had loads of support and help there. We then went through the formal referral for SEND assessment with the council and have been told it's likely to be 18 months to two years before she can be assessed. We're so lucky the school is offering the SEND type of support

before she's been formally assessed. Our head teacher is very SEND aware. The system is creaking, but the school is doing all it can, creaking. What about that word, Chris, who is joining us as well, a head teacher? This is the third time that you have been head of a school, Chris Lingard, at the moment, Ravensclyffe High School in Halifax. That's right. What about that word creaking? Do you think it's appropriate? Absolutely. I've been in education a very long time, worked in local authority as well as,

as you said, this is my third headshot. And SEN has always been tight. It's always, always been hard to ensure ensure if sufficient quality provision for everybody but this is unprecedented um this situation now we every school that i'm aware of special school is literally creaking um and something is going to give we've got we've we've just been looking in the last 10 years, we've gone from over 130 children to in September, it'll be 260. 130 to 260. How do you manage?

Well, we've had a few extra classrooms built, but, and a sixth form centre open with six classrooms there. But the infrastructure of the school is still the same and the financial challenges that go alongside with the vast overcrowding is just is it is challenges to the fact that we're not we're struggling to meet high quality education for all the students we've got now some of the students who are with us are struggling um with the the noise

levels the sheer bustling in the corridor the fact equipment is lined up all the way down the corridor um and and we've got all those students you just talked about that we're having to tighten our criteria we're having to turn down i've had twice as many requests for september as children i'm able to take and i'm really concerned about them as well. This is a massive national crisis. And it really does need somebody to take hold of this because there are families out there who are struggling. There are mainstream schools out there who are struggling.

And then there's those in special education who are really, really finding life almost impossible. Well, I want to turn to Hayley Harding next because she is a parent and she's been part of the national campaign asking that parents' views be part of the Government Sends Review. Good to have you with us, Hayley. You know, so we're hearing about the system there, but I want to hear about you, about your life day to day with your children and what you've experienced.

Yeah, so my journey, I suppose you would call it, started when my son was diagnosed with autism when he was three. He had a lot of physical disabilities, so he was picked up relatively early, but he was so weak. He needed physiotherapy to walk and he couldn't hold a pencil. And I should say I'm a solicitor, so I kind of looked at the legislation, looked at what was required, because it was very obvious in school, he wasn't going to be able to attend a standard mainstream provision, he just couldn't cope in a classroom with more than about 10 other children, and so we applied for what they call an educational healthcare needs assessment, with seven reports, all in complete complete agreement not only did he make because

the legal criteria is they may have special needs may need a plan and he was turned down and I just didn't understand it to be honest it was so clear from the evidence that we'd given that he was going to need help that it just didn't make any sense and what then happened was I went and asked made inquiries locally to find out am I going mad here because I kind of feel like I'm asking for something that's unreasonable and locally parents just said no this is standard this is what local authorities do they're almost trying to sift through the parents that will fight us to kind of filter out those plans that we don't have to pay for and unfortunately then what what transpired for us was that we did have to go to or apply to the tribunal and it took a further 10 months to

get him in the school that he he needed to go to and he did end up in a specialist provision and is still there now. And what difference did that make? Oh goodness and so he would walk around his preschool talking to himself unable to engage with any children at all. He would basically flip from table to table. He couldn't focus. He was completely overwhelmed. And the same coach said she used to walk up to him twice a day because he had two one to one sessions. And his his face would drop with his stress levels would just immediately go, knowing that he was going to be taken out of it. And then as soon as he went outside, he would get in the car with me and then it would go into instant meltdown.

He would just release, basically, screaming, shouting, crying. And that was only three hours a day. So there was no way we were going to let him go to a mainstream school full time. That just couldn't happen. So we did actually keep him off school until the October, until they found the right place. Because it was just, it was going to be cruel to send him there. And yet the local authority, their attitude was,

when I literally phoned up and said, please don't do this. My son is going to be scared every day. It was, well, let's just send him there and see how he gets on. And you just felt like, where's the care in this system? And there clearly wasn't. And so that's why I got involved in more campaigning. And do you think you're going to see concrete results? I'm seeing stories coming in here to us here on Women's Hour,

84844, the SEND system is broken. It's not creaking. I'm the parent of a teenage girl with autism. Vic saying child's primary school was abysmal. No idea what they were doing. Nobody was actually qualified. Bullying of both my child and myself. Secondary school was a revelation.

So hopefully a little bit better as she went through the system. But I mean, are you hopeful for other kids? Because we're also hearing from Chris, who's a head teacher, that the amount of people that she's had to turn down for her specialist school. Yeah, so I started a local group locally in Sutton that's got 500 members now that we support. But the lack of progress we made led me to work on the national campaign. And unfortunately, with the green paper that went out last year, I don't think the government are even genuinely looking at resolving the issues. The potential solutions they've put out and the questions they put out does not address the problem.

They are trying to. It's like putting a sticking plaster over a major hole. It's just not it's not going to work. And until they they recognise that there is a really difficult system that parents face and the culture that is built up as a result of that. What do you mean by that? So when you go to local authorities, it's all about parent demand. It's the parents, they're asking for something that they shouldn't have. And so that's why schools end up in a position where they're asked to fund for more funding than they're supposed to be given

because the local authorities just refuse. And so either the parent, the child ends up out of school or the school end up funding it or the local authority just refuse. And so either the parent, the child ends up out of school or the school end up funding it or the local authority just fight the parents continually, making them go to tribunal and then telling them that their asks are unreasonable.

So I'll throw that to you in one moment, Elaine. Before that, I just want to give the response from the Sutton Council, which Hayley was a part of. Sutton has, or was in contact with,

should I say, Sutton has some of the best schools in the country. Many people want their children to come to school in our borough. And as a result, we have a higher proportion of resident school-aged children

with EHCP compared to other parts of the UK. In each case, we seek to work closely with all the families to deliver the best outcomes for our young people. In Hayley's case,

we're pleased we're in touch and working with her to come to an outcome that is best for her family and children. Yeah, well unfortunately that does kind of miss the point. That is their point. I do also want to turn back though

to you Elaine on some of those points that she raised, particularly about funding and how the government is responding. Yeah, I mean, this, what Hayley said, you know, I've been almost overwhelmed by the number of parents who have said exactly the same thing. The breakdown in communication, what feels like a battle, them versus the school, them versus the local authority. You know, there are parents who can't even get their children assessed because 70% of councils have a shortage of educational psychologists, so they can't even get an education and health care plan, so they're having to pay privately thousands of pounds. In the documentary, we see one parent.

She can't get an education and health care plan for her child, but she's had to go private and spend £1,000 to get her child diagnosed with autism. That child is now at a mainstream school and really, really struggling. And you just kind of feel when you speak to parents, they're in a sort of maze. They're up against it. They're up against a brick wall. They're fighting a system that's putting them under incredible stress. So what Hayley's saying is actually a story that we are hearing time and time again. In terms of what the government is saying, you know, funding is a huge challenge here.

And so the local government authority have said by 2025, local authority is going to be hugely in debt in terms of billions of pounds, 3.6 billion pounds by 2025, if there isn't serious investment. Now the government says it is investing £2.6 billion over the next three years to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND who require alternative provision or for pupils who require that sort of provision. The government says that there's currently 60 new special and alternative provision fee schools in the pipeline and that it's increasing high needs funding to over £10 billion by 2024. Now, either this week or next week, we are hoping to hear some announcements from the government about what it's going to do with the system of SEND. There's been a consultation, there's been a green paper, there's been a white paper on this. And what the government is going to highlight is

a new nationalised scheme for SEND, because what we've got is lots of local authorities and lots of local decision making going on. but this is causing a real patchwork effect and with varying degrees of success and failure. The government are also saying there's going to be more investment in terms of staff training in mainstream schools and more educational psychologists. Now in terms of optimism for those parents who are in this system right now many of them have been let down so many times they're not going to be optimistic but if the government can bring some radical change to this system, then maybe there is hope for those who are about to go through the process. Elaine, thank you so much. Elaine Dunkley, the documentary is on iPlayer at the moment. Send

Help is what its name is. I also want to thank Chris Lingard, headteacher at Ravencliff High School in Halifax, a very busy woman. And of course, Hayley, who has also been telling us all about Hayley Harding, all about her story with her son. Thanks so much for sharing. Lots of people getting in touch. One person saying it is mainstream school is what special education should be about, where children with disabilities are accepted and educated alongside their peers, not excluded. Well, keep your stories coming, 84844. Thanks very much for coming on. You know, I was struck there, actually, the word reasonable came up, I think, I think in all the stories we have spoken about so far this morning on Woman's Hour. But that is the next issue we want to talk about. What's reasonable and unreasonable behaviour?

Who gets to decide? Here's a few. Is it OK to breastfeed in public? What about toppling the statue of a slave trader? Or what about your kid playing noisily in the garden while others are working from home? Any thoughts? Can we come together and talk about those things reasonably? Well, according to Dr. Kirsty Sedgman,

the author of a new book on being unreasonable. Yes, that's the important word, on being unreasonable, breaking the rules and making things better. If she asks us, really, what if we reimagined those rules of public togetherness? What would happen? Let me bring in Kirsty. Good to have you with us.

What made you settle on the term reasonable or unreasonable to have this discussion? That's a great question. Well, it's because when I started thinking about this back in 2014 now, when I had my first baby and suddenly found myself being judged by the world for all my parenting choices, I asked myself exactly that same question. I kept using the word reasonable and unreasonable rather than one of its synonyms like acceptable or appropriate. And I wondered why. So I did some digging and I found that from about the 1800s, something called the reasonable man standard really became embedded within every aspect of the international legal system as a kind of objective, neutral, imaginary figure that was used to judge everything from reasonable accommodations in disability law, to reasonable use of force in

cases of police brutality, to reasonable conduct in complaints of sexual harassment. And then when I traced it backwards, I found that that idea of the reasonable person, or before that, the reasonable man, it's at the heart of our Western moral philosophy. And I have heard it, as I mentioned this morning on the programme, a number of times we've been talking about Tiger Woods and handing a tampon. We've been talking about children getting special needs education. And I'm wondering, and also Pestminster, let's turn back to breastfeeding for a moment, though.

You say that was the personal eye-opener that showed you two sides of reasonable or unreasonable. But that went viral really when Nigel Farage waded in saying that it's not too hard surely to breastfeed discreetly. And then I was sitting at home nursing my little baby and I realised that people were erupting over this and the arguments on the one side people were saying that well it's the legal right of feeding parents not to be made to feel uncomfortable when people when they're giving their kids the necessary nourishment to survive but on the other hand the opposite side of the argument said that it's my fellow citizens right to expect that people like me should take reasonable measures not to inflict our breasts on other people and make them feel uncomfortable.

And when I watched that backlash unfold, what I realised is that fundamentally everyone had just such very different ideas about what it means to be reasonably discreet. Does it mean facing the wall? Does it mean slinking away to the loo, getting out any one boob at a time rather than both of them simultaneously? And then the big question for me is how can anyone confidently really advise on what is reasonable without going through my own lived experience? Well, that is an interesting one, because I think if I've understood correctly reading the book, you would have understood, maybe not fully Nigel Farage's position, but you said you would have thought previously that it was reasonable to cover up before having the baby, before realising how difficult the whole machinations of breastfeeding that baby in public might be. And I'm wondering then if you can understand that pre-baby person and the person that you are now, how would that ever come to a compromise

if both people are so sure that their way is the correct way? Well, for me, I would never have dreamed of shaming other people, but I did think that I would be covering up with the feeding cloth and then I realized that actually I needed to sit totally still up for up to an hour so that things didn't slip I had to keep an eye at every second on my baby's mouth otherwise nearly instant pain and damage and legally it's really important that women have the right to breastfeed in any way that makes them feel comfortable, because otherwise we can see really low rates of breastfeeding throughout the Anglophone world, which to some extent is down to that fear of being shamed. Yes. And you talk about the look and the tut-tutting in so many aspects, which actually could have come up with our last segment as well. I know a lot of parents have gone through that with their children that have special needs. You talk about it as well in other public domains, whether it's on an airplane,

for example, with a kid crying. But you are calling for people to be unreasonable, to make things better, to break the rules. How do you understand something like that happening? And what sort of instant are you talking about? Well, that really is the big question at the heart of the book. In a world where everyone thinks that they're being reasonable, how together can we figure out what's right? So when I talk about breaking the rules I do it with the necessary care I'm absolutely not suggesting that anyone should be able to do whatever they like at any point without consequence the last thing that we need is more selfish people who are just thinking only about themselves so what I'm really talking about here are cases of great injustice, whether it's the climate crisis that we're currently facing,

or racial discrimination or violence against women, those cases where throughout history, being reasonable, and calm, and engaging in endless civil debates just hasn't fixed things, then maybe we need to give ourselves and other people permission to be unreasonable. So what are you talking about? Civil disobedience? Yes. So one of the cases that I talk about, because I'm based in Bristol, is the famous Colston statue incident. And I look into all the things that happened for years beforehand, those attempts to play by the rules by campaigners, to set up petitions, to talk about the issue,

to persuade, and the reasons that those attempts to be reasonable got blocked for, really, for decades. You know, I'm coming back to my first story that we had about Tiger Woods. He handed a person he was playing with, Justin Thomas, a tampon, which people felt was disrespectful. Some people thought it was unreasonable behaviour. But it's only a certain sort of unreasonable that you want. Yes, because, of course, we need to be able to draw lines. We have to be able to draw moral lines between acceptable, unacceptable, appropriate, inappropriate, between good and bad.

But who draws them? And how do you decide them? If there's such a difference of opinion, which we've seen, you don't have to go too far in any sphere to be able to pick them out. And I'm not even talking about social media yet. Absolutely. And manners, consideration, respect, all of those things are fundamental to the proper running of societies. I'm not questioning whether we need those things at all. What I'm questioning is whether they are as simple and common sense as we often consider them to be. Because take manners. Historically, manners have been absolutely used to make shared social life better and cleaner and safer for everyone. But also, at times, they've been wielded by the powerful as a weapon to divide and disempower. And that's really hard to figure out in rhetorical, hypothetical terms. So a really specific example, manners, rules like wash your hands before eating food.

That's good. Of course it is. But rules like which set of cutlery to use first at a posh dinner, that kind of etiquette. Well, that's really nothing to do with safety or kindness. It's about figuring out who belongs at the table and who doesn't. We'll have to see how people feel about what is safety or kindness. It's about figuring out who belongs at the table and who doesn't. We'll have to see how people feel about what is appropriate

or inappropriate. Is that the word? Instead of reasonable and unreasonable. But Dr. Kirsty Sedgman, thank you so much. The author of a new book called On Being Unreasonable,

Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better. Thanks for joining us on Woman's Hour. I have Nadine Benjamin in front of me. Good morning. Morning. Nice to see you. I should say MBE. Oh, yeah. I always forget about that. Oh, I wouldn't forget about that. Good morning to you. Now, you grew up in Brixton. I just want

to give people a little bit of your story. You are now this marvellous opera singer, which lots of people, of course, will be familiar with. But I love the idea of little Nadine. In the house in Brixton, what was playing? Al Green, Diana Ross, Supremes and Bob Marley. Bob Marley. Because I was brought up a Rastafarian, so Bob Marley was very much the thing in the household. And where did opera come from? Opera came from a music teacher called Mrs Lake at St Martin's

and she had never played me an opera piece before and I was leaving school, secondary school, on the last day. The last day? Yeah, and she paid me Mozart's magic flute the queen of the night's aria and she said before you leave I just have to let you know that you could sing like that one day and why was she listening to you singing and just had an epiphany I think she really wished me to go to a conservatoire and it just wasn't an option for me at that time of my life so I went into a YTS. And what did you do? I did business administration. A bit different to opera? Very different to opera

but I still loved it you know and I found that the mirror sometimes of where life pushes us is very useful for when you get to where I am now I need all that kind of business acumen in my head in order to be who I am today you know the stereotype of opera that it's very highbrow elite posh for want of a better word um how difficult was it to break into the industry it was it was it was challenging because the one side of it I was told um I'd never be an opera singer and I should go and sing jazz and I never got into any of the conservatoires um so but again we come back to you know sometimes our life our life path gives us new things so I wrote a business plan for becoming an opera singer. And from that, that's how I was able to really find the investment

in order to train myself. And I did it in summer schools and I did it a different way. So we don't always have to do the traditional route to get the things that we desire or are ours by the universe. I could see that being a bestseller, the business plan to become an opera singer. Well, I do that. I have got itchings to write a book about something like that. I don't know, but we'll see. Your voice has also been featured in pop music. I mean,

the Vaccines, Emily Sandé. Yeah. Do you think opera will feature more widely perhaps in pop music going forward? Or is it a future career for you? I would love that. I would absolutely love that. I mean, I used to sing jazz, garage, drum and bass as well. So when I got to work with Bugsy Malone and Emily Sandé and The Vaccines, it was really great because I could mix the two genres. I understood their genre and I could make mine kind of meet theirs in a really magical way.

Now, I understand that it's quite difficult to do opera and then sing pop music, for example, which is something I didn't realise. I should know more being a radio host about voices, but I guess I don't. I think that they're two different mediums. You need just as much training for both, but the training is different. You will be performing tomorrow at the Barbican in Songs of Joy, which brings together stories told through a song and spoken word, celebrating the lived experiences of black and also mixed race composers.

Thanks for coming in, Nadine. Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute joy. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Introducing Gaslight. I think there's something peculiar about this house. A new drama from BBC Radio 4.

The gaslight's over there above the fireplace. Yes? I wonder if Mummy might be trying to get in touch. Is the light playing tricks on you? Or is it just your mind? What if we both sold this place and you got a job in one of those little colleges that would be pleased to have you? You don't really believe that, do you? I'm trying to be kind.

Like you were with the dog. How much do we really know about the person we love? Is there something I should know about, Jack? No. I didn't put a foot wrong. And how much can we rely? Quite a bit younger than you appear to be on screen. On the kindness of strangers.

And you look like you've been crying. Gaslight. You can't talk to me like that. I don't even know who you are. Available on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now.