Woman's Hour - Women and Eid, School Refusal Report, Author Marni Appleton

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Eid is a celebration of strength and gratitude where Muslims all around the world come together to mark the end of Ramadan. Nuala McGovern is joined by one of the first Muslim headteachers in the country, Bushra Nasir, author & podcaster Shelina Janmohamed and Executive Board Member at the Muslim Council of Wales Jamilla Hekmoun to discuss what roles they have on this day, from acting as the ‘memory markers’ to passing down the rich traditions that keep religious stories and practices alive as well as some of the pressures women can feel at this time. Women across England will be able to get the morning after pill for free from pharmacies from later this year, the Government has said. Emergency contraception is already free of charge from most GPs and sexual health clinics. But ministers say getting it in pharmacies is a "postcode lottery" - with some councils funding free prescriptions, while elsewhere women can pay up to £30. Nuala discusses the plan with Dr Janet Barter, President, Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.The Government says it's going to create 10,000 new school places for children with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools. Ministers are saying £740 million will be allocated in England over the next three years. It comes as a new report is launched at Westminster today which warns that more and more children are 'losing learning' because their needs are not being met, or they are being suspended or excluded. Nuala discusses the issues and possible solutions with the report's author, Ellie Harris, Aaliyah, a young woman who couldn't attend school due to SEND, and the actress and mother Anna Maxwell Martin and Louise McLeod, the Executive Headteacher of two primary schools in Norfolk.Darkly funny, unsettling, and razor-sharp, I Hope You’re Happy by Marni Appleton is a haunting collection of short stories exploring modern womanhood through the lens of horror and satire. From viral photos to eerie performances in dead-end jobs, these stories capture the weirdness of millennial life... where power struggles, fleeting connections, and social media anxieties collide with the surreal. Marni joins Nuala to discuss the themes and her inspiration.Presented by Nuala McGovern Producer: Louise Corley

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. It is indeed. Hello and welcome to the program. Well, the government says it will fund 10,000 new places for children with special educational needs and disabilities or send in England. But what difference will that pledge make to the pupils, parents and teachers who have told us that they need more support? Now you may have seen the actor Anna Maxwell Martin

say that there should be an end to cruel and idiotic fines for parents whose children struggle to attend school and also a ban on what she called shameful school exclusions. Well Anna is here with us including a panel of guests too as we're going to look at a new report that explores who is losing learning. That report will be launched this afternoon in the House of Commons. Also today, the author Marnie Appleton, who has written a book of short stories called I Hope You're Happy. It is all about navigating millennial womanhood, hair raising and thought provoking. I'm looking forward to speaking to Marnie.

Plus, Muslims around the world are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, breaking their fast following the holy month of Ramadan. We will check in with three Muslim women on how they are celebrating the festival today with their new and old traditions. So if there's anything in the program that you would like to comment on, share your story, share your experience, you can text the program the number is 84844 on social media or at BBC Woman's Hour or you can email us through our website or indeed send a WhatsApp message or a voice note, that number 03700 100444. But let us begin with emergency contraception. Women across England will be able to get the morning after pill for free from pharmacies from later this year.

That is an announcement by the government. Emergency contraception is already free of charge from most GPs and sexual health clinics, but ministers say getting it in pharmacies is a postcode lottery, with some councils funding free prescriptions, while elsewhere women could pay up to £30. While joining me to discuss this this morning is Dr Janet Barter, President of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, the voice for professionals who are working on the frontline of sexual and reproductive health as they say. Dr Janet Barter, welcome to the programme. First off, your reaction to this particular move? Good morning. Well, we are absolutely thrilled.

At the FSRH, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, and with our partners, we have been calling for this for some time because we think it will make a real difference to women and to women's healthcare. So we're very, very pleased. And I'll come back to why exactly, but maybe for those that aren't that familiar with the emergency contraception, how does it work? So there's two different sorts of oral emergency contraception, and that's quite important because there is another type as well. But basically what it does is it delays the ovulation. So if you've had sex that was unprotected for whatever reason, and it's near the time of ovulation, it pushes back the ovulation, that's the release of the egg, so that the

sperm won't survive long enough to fertilize the egg. So I mentioned there that you can get the pill free already, even some pharmacies might provide it for free. So what does this big change, as you call it, and also one that you're very excited about, actually mean? What's the difference? So what it's going to mean is that women will reliably be able to get hold of emergency contraceptive pills from their pharmacist, regardless of their age or where they live. So the organisation of emergency contraception is different in different areas of the country. In some places it's available free for young people, in a few places it's available free for everybody. But the problem is nobody really knows, and most women won't know whether they can get it from their pharmacist or not.

And of course it's time sensitive. We know it will be more effective the sooner you take it. So if you can just walk into a pharmacy rather than trying to get an appointment somewhere, it's likely to be more effective. And in the future then, no prescription charge at all? No. So all contraception is free in this country because obviously it's a really important preventative health measure. So there will not be a prescription charge for this. It will be absolutely free under this guidance. How safe and effective is it to take?

It's very safe indeed. So we don't really have concerns about the safety of emergency contraception. It's a small dose of a hormone. It's hormones that have been used for very many, many years. It is safe for everybody to take. In terms of effectiveness, it does depend where you are in your cycle. And there are times when it would be better to have an IUD fitted. But the pharmacist should be able to talk to the woman about that. And of course, ideally, it's less stressful to use regular contraception,

but this is very, very important. You talk about, you know, the sooner you take it, the better, and also depending on where you are in the cycle, but I call it, and many do, emergency contraception or the morning after pill, but it is effective for 72 hours in the majority of cases? Yeah, and that's a very good point that you make because when we call it the morning after pill that does tend to say to women you've got to get it the next day otherwise it's no good and that's not true.

So there's two different types of emergency pill, one works for three days after the sex, the other one works for five days after the sex. So women do have a bit of time. But we do come to that issue often being available in pharmacies. You've given some of the information there of course but the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, have said there needs to be training for pharmacists to enable them to deliver this scheme. Well pharmacists are highly trained professionals anyway, so they're very, very familiar with how to take any medication, any risks or benefits, whether it's safe for any individual person.

They do have, the pharmacy scheme do have modules of training for pharmacists and at the FSRH actually we also, pharmacists can be members of the FSRH and we've already done webinars and we've already done webinars and we are developing a training program for them. So yes, they will need to be trained and they will need to understand their local area and they'll need to be networked in with their local services so that if there is someone they're not sure about, they've got, you know, they can phone a friend. So that is really important. But I know the people running this scheme are very keen for it to work very safely and very effectively and the training will be

put in place. Do you mention some of the information that we don't have? I'm wondering, do we know how common it is for women to access emergency contraception via their local pharmacy? It's very variable from one part of the country to another. So we work very closely with commissioners of health care from local authorities and we're hearing that in some parts of the country the use of emergency contraception seems to be really reducing.

In other parts of the country it seems to be really increasing. And we don't really know why that is, but it may be to do with access and to do with women not knowing whether they can access or not and so therefore maybe not trying. So we think the publicity about this is really important as well so we can say to women, yes, this is something you will be able to do. And for those that may say that it might encourage people to take less responsibility for contraception in advance of sex? I think it's really important that women have the choice about what they do. We do know that there do appear to be more women choosing not to take regular contraception. For all

of us, we will only do what we do effectively if we feel comfortable with it. So this is another choice for women and it's very useful in an emergency when your contraception fails or you had sex that you weren't planning to have. That line that you've just given, I'm sure we could speak for a lot longer about it, but you just says that you understand or you have evidence or figures that you believe women are taking regular contraception less frequently than before? It seems to be the case. So some recent studies do seem to suggest that there are more women choosing not to use contraception or certainly choosing not to use hormonal contraception.

So we're doing a lot of work trying to understand that, trying to understand what women are concerned about, make sure women get really good information. But at the end of the day, women must make their own choices about their fertility and how they control it. This will bring a pharmacy-centered approach to emergency contraception. Is there a concern among pharmacists, do you think, about more pressure being put upon them? That's not something I can really answer. I've not had that conversation with pharmacists but I think pharmacists are very keen to help their local community. They're often central to a local community and there's

a lot less stigma in going into a pharmacist for something like this because you could be going in for anything. So I can't say and there's a lot less stigma in going into a pharmacist for something like this because you could be going in for anything. So I can't say whether there's concerns but I know there's certainly enthusiasm. Dr Janet Barter, President of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, thank you so much for joining us. Maybe some thoughts on that 84844 maybe as a pharmacist or somebody who's used emergency contraception please do get in touch. Or indeed you might want to get in touch on our next item. I know many of you feel very passionately about it.

You might have seen the government says it's going to create 10,000 new school places for children with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools. Ministers are saying £740 million will be allocated in England over the next three years to encourage local authorities to adapt mainstream schools for pupils with SEND. It comes as a new report is launched at Westminster today which warns that more and more children are losing learning because their needs are not being met or that they are being suspended or excluded.

Well, with me in the studio is the actress Anna Maxwell-Martin, who says school exclusions are shameful and fines are cruel and idiotic. We're going to speak to Anna in a moment. We have a number of people that are joining us throughout this programme. We have Ellie Harris as well. Welcome Ellie, who's the co-author of the report about losing learning. Also Alia Fosol, who is also a person who did not attend school but now is working to try and help others who may have become excluded or absent for whatever reason it is. Maybe I could start with you, Aliyah. You were excluded from school. Tell

me a little of how it happened. So it started with me being in my English class one morning. I was really struggling with my mental health. I had a panic attack, left the class and a staff member found me, said they didn't know how to support me and the school couldn't do much more for me so that I would be indefinitely excluded. And I remember I can process it at the time I was like, oh, when am I coming back? And then the reality hit and it definitely impacted my mental health further after that. Yeah, and from that time, how did it impact you, do you think, Aaliyah?

Not being, having that structure, not from that time, how did it impact you, do you think, Aaliyah, not having that structure or not having that system? I think it felt like the future was kind of taken away because within the education system you're told education is a way to your future. So I think it almost felt like that hope and chance at life was gone because you're removed from a system where you see all these other young people and the thing that's meant to get me to the next stage of life. So yeah, I felt like I barely existed. I mean, that's the thing. I'm thinking you're going through life and you can

see a lot of the other young people that were your age at that point. So I suppose was it about eight years ago? Would that be right? Yeah, in 2017. Yeah, that are, you know, day to day, the friends, social activities, whatever it might be, as well as the education, but not being part of that. Yeah, it was quite crushing, I think, because it felt like I put in so much hard work

to try to get to a stage in life where I felt I could, I guess, contribute in a way to how everyone else does. But yeah, not having that really took away a lot. But it is incredible now that you are a voice for those that are excluded. Trying to be, yeah. And we'll get to exactly what that might mean. But I want to also turn to a headteacher, executive headteacher of two primary schools in Norfolk and that's Louise McLeod. Good to have you with us Louise, thank you for joining us this morning. I was mentioning a moment ago that the government has announced it's going to create another 10,000 places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in

mainstream schools. Your response to that announcement? Obviously, I welcome any increase in funding and resources to support our students with special education needs. It also supports the wider population of the school, however I feel the line isn't really good enough for people to be able to hear exactly some of the points that you're making Louise. We will try and reconnect with you because I know, I imagine there are head teachers all across the country looking at this because it's something of course that we've heard affects them so deeply, the children, the parents and the teachers that are trying to give an education. Anna, let me turn to you, welcome back to the program, good to have you with us. You are a mother of a child who is not in school, you're hearing a little bit from Alia there but I'm

wondering about these 10,000 places that you're hearing will be created, your reaction to it. My daughter is in school sometimes now, so that's an amazing achievement for her. I'm really proud of her and the school and how they've helped her. Of course I really welcome it and I want lots and lots more, more, we want more from the government, so much more funding. I mean, look, I'd rather it wasn't called special educational needs. I'd rather it was individual needs. I think then we understand that it is about the individual,

it meets their individual needs, and it can also encompass wellbeing and pastoral, which we need loads more of in school. I think schools feel completely hobbled. I see it in my daughter's school. I was at parents' evening this week. Incredible teachers, so kind, so compassionate, doing their absolute best with a head that is recruiting those wonderful teachers. But it is often a situation of robbing Peter to pay Paul. They can't do everything. They don't have

the funding. And they, of course, we all understand really as humans that if you value children, exceptional children like Aleah, all children, and you make them feel valued and have worth, they will thrive and they will learn. But the systems we have in place, certainly with Ofsted at the moment, that only values results, means it's really difficult for the schools and the heads to enact on that. Therefore, it's difficult for the schools and the heads to enact on that, therefore it's difficult for parents, it's difficult for children, square peg children don't fit into that system. So we need much, much more. The government needs to put money where its mouth is. I was at something the other night, 10 Dining Street, and Angela Rainer was talking brilliantly about the

next generation of young women and inspiring them and breaking glass ceilings. Then invest in schools and invest in young girls and young boys and however else they identify, please invest in children. They are the cornerstone of everything that goes after it. I mean what the Department of Education has told Women's Hour is that they're providing almost £1 billion more in high needs budgets for 2025 to 26. So bringing the total high needs funding to £11.9 billion. They say that funding will help local authorities and schools with the increasing costs of supporting children and young people with complex SEND, special educational needs and disabilities. They go on to say,

we've also announced, which I was mentioning, £740 million of high needs capital funding for 25 to 26 year to invest in places for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision. And they also say they're providing access to mental health support and making attendance one of the four core priorities of our school improvement teams. Okay, so on this note on attendance, attendance is not the condition. We need to look underneath attendance and the anxiety underneath it, the square peg kids, what they're going through at home. We're verging on nearly one in three children in our cities who are affected by poverty. That has a massive impact on school and their school life.

Then throw in neurodiversity, learning difficulties. I know, I live in this household, it's a jigsaw of different things and we need to help schools meet the needs of those children and most importantly include those children. When we start talking about exclusion, you know, I have Leah sitting next to me. I'm sure anyone listening to her story would find that brutalizing. We mustn't exclude children. Two things before I move on Anna. One, I am interested in the fact that you prefer it's not called Send anymore because I feel that's the shorthand that we use. Do you

feel it's detrimental? I just don't like this term special education. I prefer individual needs because then it feeds for me into the idea of active listening with children, meeting their individual needs of the child in front of you. You don't necessarily need labels, you just need compassion to meet the needs of the child in front of you and I would love all schools and I see the pressure that teachers are under to feel empowered and of the child in front of you. And I would love all schools, and I see the pressure that teachers are under, to feel empowered and have the funding to be able to do that. Also, your daughter or your child is back in school more than they were.

Is there anything, not specifically to talk about your child, but are there practices that you saw that you're like, that's what really helped? Kindness. Kindness, Ms Page One. Honestly, honestly, all the kindness she received from certain individuals at school, compassion and kindness she felt seen, you know, all these children who struggle with all these things, they are so fearful. Leah can talk about this much better than I can. They just feel fear, whether that's a very loud child acting out disruptive in the classroom or a

very quiet child who's in a turmoil. It's just fear at the end of the day and they just need kindness and compassion. Let me bring in, we've managed to reconnect with Louise McLeod, the executive head teacher of two primary schools in Norfolk. Thank you Louise. I will get your answer again on your reaction to the government's announcement that it will create another 10,000 places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools. Yeah, we really welcome the increased resource but also the increased focus on what needs to happen in schools to recognise the challenge we're facing and it doesn't go far enough. Recently the Norfolk County Council asked us all to submit the details of our pupils who have individual

needs, listening to your call are just there, I wholeheartedly agree. That's Anna Maxwell-Martin, the actor. Thank you, Anna. And 22,000, almost 22,000 children with individual needs were submitted with detailed requirements for plans. That's just in Norfolk. So absolutely we welcome it. There's a bigger need out there than that will cover. What are you seeing in your school? Well in our school we've taken the view and very much linked to the report you were talking about earlier,

thank you for sending that to me, that we need to improve all of school. We need to, rather than the recent curriculum review said we needed an evolution rather than revolution and I would disagree and say we do need a revolution. We need to look afresh at the whole of our system and what we're providing for our communities and for our schools. And we've taken that approach in my schools, lifting the quality of practice for all children. We have a special resource space for children with autism on site, and we want those children

to access mainstream education and feel seen and feel heard. They're part of everything that we do, and we've seen that to be really powerful, given the profile of the students in our school. And I think what's interesting there is people may think that the students that are in the resource space are at our most extreme level of need but actually due to the resource being there, their level of requirement is of moderate need whereas actually the most extreme levels of need, those children who are waiting perhaps for specialist provision, they're actually in the mainstream classrooms but benefiting from this improvement across the whole organisation.

And some messages coming in, Louise maybe you'd like to answer this one. The debate about exclusion is one sided. No one is discussing the safety of the majority of other students in the classes or the safety of staff. Children in my school are terrified of violent behaviour and staff are continuously getting verbally and physically abused. No one appears to be looking after their safety or well-being. No one wants children to be excluded. We understand this is detrimental, but as teachers we're also

responsible for all the other children who are not displaying such behaviour. Louise? Absolutely and of course I've seen this in my career, I've been a head teacher for almost 30 years right across the East End of London, Norfolk and Hampshire and I know exactly the challenges that schools face for staff and we've seen a huge uprise in unintentional harm to staff and also to other students in Norfolk. And I'm sure nationally we're seeing that. And it means everybody's really upset and worried.

When children are dysregulated, it's them communicating with us that something's not right there in the provision. And so we need to really listen to that and look back at our provision. Headteachers are hampered with the lack of resource and also the fragmented system that we're sitting in now as our local authorities try and navigate the changes that are occurring politically in education. So what we found with regard to that and what I've noticed is that very often children will get to the point of exclusion and an alternative provision placement is sought to help that child regulate. However,

what I've noticed is the provision they often go to is a very play-based or forest school provision because the children need to regulate in that space. And I think I would argue that if all schools had that provision right at the get-go, we'd see lower levels of dysregulation. Post-pandemic students' ability to communicate with each other, communicate their needs and mix in with their peers, integrate in large classrooms, I think it's been hampered by access to high quality play and a curriculum that allows students to engage in what we know is part of our natural brain development as human beings. So we've taken that view. And the government I'd say would say the 740 million is capital funding to invest in places for children and young people would send who require alternative provision.

But we mentioned the report, let's get into some more of the details of it. It's called Losing Learning. Ellie Harris is here from the education charity, the difference and a co-author of that report with the IPP or Think Tank. Good to have you with us. Ellie, you've heard like a range of different experience from our panel so far, but who do you see as losing learning specifically? Thanks so much for having me. This is a growing and an alarming problem that's impacting more and more children each year. We've talked a lot about children with individual or special educational needs, but it also impacts children living in poverty, those in receipt of free school meals, children from certain

ethnic minority backgrounds, young carers, children with a social worker. It's a really far wide-reaching problem that I think if we look around our families, our friends, the children we know in our lives, we all know a child who might be struggling with anxiety, struggling at school, has those unmet needs and this is a problem in every single classroom in the country. So you talk about whole school inclusion. What do you mean by that? By that we mean exactly as the head teacher on the line has also set out, that this isn't an add-on, it's not a bolt-on to the school system. It should be fundamental to what schools

do. We've seen amazing progress in things like English and maths teaching in this country in the last 10 years. We want to see the same for inclusion. It's possible to teach schools, to teach teachers, to teach children how to be included and how to do that really well. We want the same rigorous approach applied there, not once a child is identified and once they've met a threshold or a crisis point, but as fundamental to the fabric of schools. When you talk about rigorous, what are the measures of success? How do you give evidence that it has been successful?

That's a great question and we believe that the difference that inclusion is measurable. It's possible to see which schools are doing well at it and which children are benefiting from that. How do you measure that? So we have a continuum of lost learning which sets out all the ways that children miss out on their education because they're being sent out of class, because they're not coming to school in the first place. Maybe they are in school, but actually they're walking around the school building or hiding in the toilets

at lunchtime. Schools often have data on those things. They know where children are on the school day. And you can see when you put things in place like new training for teachers or new policies in the school, whether that has a positive or negative effect on lost learning. There's really good evidence here as well. This isn't a fluffy thing that is just about being nice to children. It's also about using the evidence we have from places like the Education Endowment Foundation on social, emotional, mental health and speech, language and communication needs. You can absolutely meet those needs of children. The evidence base is great and teachers are often

really, really good at that. But those needs are increasing largely due to poverty and million children now live in destitution which means they're not dry they're not warm and they're not fed which means they're coming to school not being able to communicate as well or dysregulated and we need to equip teachers with the skills and to solve those problems. Lots of messages coming in coming in if it's all about funding we need to pay more tax and target education. Children seem to thrive in smaller classes and it's easier to provide an individual with the care and compassion they need.

However, all I hear is people complaining about income tax. So another angle on it there. Ellie, do you see you talk about maths in English, for example, and things that have been measurable there. But what is it that is going wrong or what could help getting more children into school and staying in school I mean Anna talked about compassion and kindness specifically what are you calling for? So this report which we're launching in Parliament this afternoon and sets out a

ten-point plan for government for local authorities and for schools and trusts directly. Give me your top one. My top one would be £850 million of funding for special educational needs that would pay for itself in five years, so no need to necessarily increase taxes. But by meeting children's needs earlier, they're less likely to escalate, less likely to need an education, health and care plan and thereby thrive in school. And the educational care and health plan that we've spoken about many times on this program. It can be a real battle for parents to get one, it can go to various tribunals trying to figure out which is also a time suck and a money suck as we know. So you're talking about earlier intervention. But you know as I have mentioned the

Department of Education says they're providing almost 1 billion more for high needs budgets. They also talk about the 740 of capital needs. Is that not enough? That one billion pounds doesn't go to schools, it goes to local authorities and it goes often to special schools. When schools do receive that money it's in the form of these individual contracts via education health and care plans for individual children. It's really really hard to upskill your whole staff or to do whole school approaches when you're managing sort of 10, 20, 30 individual contracts with the local authority. That funding, that billion pounds is not going to go to

the things that we need at most. So you feel it's been, if you were speaking to Bridget Phillipson for example, the education sector, you'd say it's been funded in the wrong way? Absolutely. Yeah. We need to give schools access to early intervention. It can't be once a child's reached crisis point. You've filled in several forms. You've had a conversation with the parent. You've had a fight with the local authority.

You've gone to tribunal. Then finally, you get the £6,000 that you need to send a teaching assistant on the course. Like that funding needs to be available as quickly as possible. Anna is nodding. Yeah, I just absolutely support everything that Louise has said, that Ellie has said, that Aliyah has said. If you think, if we think, if we just dilute everything so hard, because Ellie's work is so exceptional, the difference work is brilliant, but if we just dilute it for a moment into what Aliyah's experience, at that moment she went to that toilet when she was anxious, the crossroads there of a system broken and saying, we can't meet your needs, we're kicking you

out and what that meant for her and her future, she's an excellent young person, or compassion, kindness, sitting down, let's talk about this, let's see what's happening, let's have some time out, a little bit of regulation together. It's easy to decide which way you should go and this is what Ellie's talking about really, at the basis of these things, and much more practical things about funding and government. You know, it's really important, this report. I want to turn back to you, Louise,

a head teacher in Norfolk. I'm just reading a message coming in. I have two boys who are neurodiverse. If we could redirect the excessive costs spent on the administration of assessments to schools to support the specialist units discussed by the head teacher, needs would be met before the crisis hits, echoing what I'm hearing. Assessment could then take place in these units with economic efficiency and less burden on parents. Louise, how do you see it when it comes to funding?

Well, your caller I agree with and this is a move that Norfolk has made recently in requiring schools not to have to have parents go through arduous assessments and back and forth to our NHS, which we know is under a huge pressure. And actually what we're doing is sharing a detailed view of what the students' needs, individual needs are, and then the local authority then directly funding to that need, which means the parents haven't had to go through all of that battling because the thing that I see in my families who have spent children who've got individual needs that require adaptations in school or are asked to think carefully about how we serve that family and that young person is that they

are fighting all the time and we're trying to advocate for families but the system as we've heard is already broken and I think Ellie's report we welcome, you know, that I was so pleased to see it, it's exactly what we're doing in our schools here and championing it with other schools as well to make a difference and also echoing some of the elements of the Local Government Association's detailed report. One of the other things they're doing is local zones which fits in with one of the top 10 in Ellie's wish list around making resources available within a community. Very often you've got a lottery as a school as to what you can access around educational psychology support, OTs, that sort of thing and Norfolk's putting in place zones where head teachers can meet and discuss the needs of individual

children and best target those resources. It'd be interesting as well to follow up and see how that went, maybe get a couple of the teachers together. I want to go back to Ilea who spoke to us at the very beginning of this item. I mean, you know what might work for children to not be absent or excluded. What would you say? I think the early intervention aspect is so key. So providing that kind of listening ear and at the heart of it. Yeah.

Is that what you needed? Do you think at that point when you were 16, 17 and walked out of that classroom not to return? I think, yeah, a basic level of care that you can then work on to see okay what are the needs here and actually what can the school support with, what connections can they make because again there's a lot of pressure on schools to handle quite a lot themselves so even if that's connecting of others I can know what's helped me recently is I can volunteer mentors who've really shown a lot of compassion and care and to me that's like

wow how do I wait this many years for my life to meet someone who actually just was there and able to support me and it's like I think schools could do a lot more of that too. Thank you for coming in today that's Ailéa Fasul also we heard from Louise McLeod the executive head teacher of two primary schools in Norfolk, Eireanna Maxwell- Martin also, and Ellie Harris who has the report out this afternoon that will be presented in the House of Commons. It's called Who is Losing Learning, Ellie's from the education charity The Difference, and the report was with the IPP or Think Tank. Thanks to all of you. Thanks to all of you getting in touch as well. A lot of messages coming in. Here's Samantha, she says my daughter is at a mainstream school with a specialist unit within it for children with learning and additional needs.

It's an incredible place but the council have pulled funding for it. It's a tragedy and a complete failure on the part of the council. They promised one thing, delivered it and within two years have taken it away. Tragic. Another. I had a foster daughter who had been excluded from two mainstream schools. When she came to live with me she had been completely out of education for over two years. I found a place for her with a brilliant alternative education provider but social services would only allow her to go to a mainstream school. If she was excluded again then they would consider an alternative provider. Needless to say she simply refused to go and is still out of education.

We're setting children up to fail. It's fine for genuinely radical reform of the whole education system and our attitude towards our young people. I think she means it's time for genuinely radical reform. I've heard that word many times as we talk about this. Reform, root and branch, radical. Do keep messaging and I'll keep reading. That's 84844 if you'd like to get in touch, on text, on social media, we're at BBC Woman's Hour or indeed you can email us through our website.

Let us turn to some short stories. They have a wonderful way of drawing us in quickly and immersing us into a different world. I Hope You're Happy is a book of short stories by Marnie Appleton, who is opposite me in the Woman's Hour studio. It is sharp, it is darkly funny, it is a collection that brings us this time into the world of millennial women navigating friendships, breakups, dead-end jobs, even the occasional ghost. Marnie, welcome to Women's Hour. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed the book. So many thoughts and themes. I was calling it hair raising, eye popping and thought-provoking. Why are you drawn to a short story? I think there's something about the short story that demands a specific kind of attention.

So I feel reading short stories myself, I'll often return to them and I feel like they can really dig into issues. And I also wanted to approach this kind of topic of coming of age as a young woman in the 21st century from lots of different angles and the short story form, writing this collection enabled me to kind of tackle different issues and different ways into the same topic. Are you in many of those characters? I'm not, I wouldn't say I'm in many of those characters, but what happens in the stories has definitely been informed by things that have happened in my life or things that I've seen. Your powers of observation are quite something.

I will say that. Are you going to read a little for us? Yes. So this is the story, the first one that I delved into. Shut your mouth and read a little and then we'll talk about it. Three minutes past midnight Tuesday night a hazy shape static against the darkness ponytail puffer jacket handbag a girl like a blast of light the CCTV footage slows as the girl leaves the fried chicken shop a box of food clutched

to her chest with one hand phone in in the other. She taps on the screen as she walks down the road and slips out of shot. A moment of lunar emptiness, a bright crackle, before the door swings open and she steps out into the street again. The clip loops on repeat. I scour the screen looking for something, a tiny detail, an overlooked speck of evidence, eyes glinting from the bushes. There must be something we are not seeing." And I feel we can see that scene as we read it but let's talk about that particular short story. The protagonist becomes an armchair detective of sorts in the case of a missing girl and you know that is something that has become

part of the narrative of so many crime. And you know that is something that has become part of the narrative of so many crime stories that we cover, including here on Women's Error. I'm wondering what propelled you to write that? Well I was seeing in the news that when these kind of cases came up, social media enabled people to become these armchair detectives because they could share information and that sort of thing. And I suppose social media helped to whip people up into this kind of frenzy. But what interested me about it was that people were almost like projecting their own narrative on onto the case. So people were looking for a specific outcome, which

was usually, it seemed to be that people were almost like excited for it to be, you know, violence or kidnapping or something terrible. Because often in the case of a woman at the heart of it. Yeah, exactly. I think it's specifically a woman thing and it's always with women that these cases take on this life of their own. And I was just interested in how we see women in all different areas where women are represented in the media but in this case where it feels like it's motivated by concern, this kind of like where is this woman but actually the woman becomes like an object, you know, a vessel

almost through which we're channeling this kind of true crime fantasy. And very much a modern phenomenon in the way it is now. I know true crime has been popular for decades, but I suppose it's up so close and personal on our phone screens, for example. So that is one part of the short story that I can see the reflection of real life in it. But the other is about a phenomenon that happens after a photo of a supermodel eating a hot dog goes viral. Then that leads to an online explosion of photos of women eating in public. I was like, that could definitely happen.

So much so that women begin covering their mouths, so not to be exposed in that way. Quite a concept. Talk me through the impetus for that. I was thinking about food online, I think particularly on Instagram, with people taking photos of their food and how food takes on this sort of like moral dimension. And at the same time I was thinking about women's bodies and how they're policed and how it feels to be, I guess for me, how it feels to be eating in public, that I almost feel like I'm being judged on what I'm eating, how I'm eating, where I'm eating.

And then they all just kind of coalesced into this narrative. And I was also thinking a lot about how trends swing. So like you could go from the one way of eating in public is like this empowering thing, the supermodel does it and it's like, that's, you know, that's cool. And eating a highly calorific item. Yeah, exactly. But then it swings around to being like actually now it's gone too far and women immediately want to cover their mouths and the effects of that mean that they're kind of hiding a part of themselves and limiting their power of speech. And even though this is coming from your imagination, with many of them I thought this could actually

happen and then some I was like does this actually happen? Chastity cages? I looked up for the first time. That's all I'm going to say on that one, they'll have to read the book. But there is social media playing a huge role in a lot of these stories because being a millennial woman, for example, she has grown up in a time before I did, for example, with, I suppose, a reflection consistently there. Yeah, definitely. I think also social media has seeped

into so many areas of our lives. So relationships are conducted online and the title, I Hope You're Happy, is something that can be taken two ways, have two very different meanings and I think- I hope you're happy. Yeah. I hope you're happy. Well. I hope you're happy.

Well, I said this the other day and I think my mind automatically thinks sarcastic. But some people think seem to think that it's like a genuine sort of, I, you know, a nice, yeah. So I don't know what that says about me. But yeah, well, I'm with you because I took it as sarcastic too. But, um, with that, the importance of female friendships, we've talked about often, but also you have that dark side of friendships in a social media age, that even if a relationship has ended, it's very hard to sever the bonds completely.

Yeah. I think that, you know, in times gone by, there would be high school reunions or that sort of thing. So you would have these long gaps of where you've almost forgotten about these people and then you find them again and you reconnect. Whereas now, people that I've known my entire life, I constantly know what they're up to on social media. And we have this weird thing where you might not actually be in contact, you might not feel like you can speak to that person, but you still observe their life and you know if they're pregnant, you know if they've got a new job. And there's something nice about that, but also something quite creepy and insidious about this, like

just watching each other all the time. Creepy and insidious are two good words to describe some of the experiences that your characters, the protagonists in the various stories have. I'm wondering, do you feel there's been a suppression of joy for the young woman? Oh, what an interesting question. I think that in terms of feelings for young women in this day and age, I think social media makes those feelings feel almost like mandated, like you should feel happy within the presentation that you give on social media, or you should feel happy for certain benchmarks in your life, like you

have a baby, you get married, you, you know, now as well, like you have a career. And I think actually, with these things put in their boxes of how you should feel about them, it means that if you feel outside of that, you can feel kind of alienated from womanhood, I suppose, if you feel like it's not, you're not fitting into it in quite the right way. So I was thinking a lot about feelings, I suppose, when I was writing this, like how it feels to be slightly outside of a narrative, like an expectation, I suppose, that you think that's how things are going to be. And if they don't turn out the way you expect, how does that feel?

But also, as we talk about somewhat dystopian view at times, also very, very funny. Yeah, the funny element I think was a surprise to me when I was writing. I definitely felt like it was very serious, but I'm glad that they became as funny as they did, because I think sometimes things are just so absurd that you have to laugh at them. I loved it, I have to say. Made me think in so many ways about modern life, phones, relationships, jobs, careers, feminism, all of it is there. Short stories next or something else, Marnie? Well, we'll see. Yeah, I'm working on a couple of things. So yeah. Well, I hope you. Yes, I'm working on a couple of things. So, yeah. Well, I hope you're happy.

You too. Marnie Appleton, thanks very much for coming in to us here on the Women's Hour Studio 84844, if you'd like to get in touch. Right. Now, Eid Mubarak. Happy Eid to all of those that are celebrating. It officially started yesterday for some people. And Muslims around the world have begun their celebrations.

Over the next few days around 4 million Muslims in the UK are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, known as the festival for breaking the fast. It does mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan where Muslims around the world fast from dawn to dusk, but it is more than a feast. For many it's a time of reflection, for prayer, for community, and we want to speak to some of the women that are at the heart of all this. I'm joined by Bushra Nasir, who was the first ever female Muslim head teacher in the country. You're very welcome Bushra. Shalina Janmohamed, Director of Consumer Equality at Ogilvy, and she's an author and podcaster. She hosts the Muslim

Women Talk Ramadan podcast and Jamila Hecmoon, executive board member at the Muslim Council of Wales, who has recently completed her PhD on mental health within the Muslim community. You're all so welcome. Well, let me begin with you, Shalina. I understand you went to Eid prayers this morning. I have just literally rushed back through the front door after Eid prayers. People probably can't see, but I am in my finery. I have in my glad rags. Describe it, describe it for us. I have gone a bit understated this morning because I was worried I was going to be rushing

around. So I've got a big kind of frilly blue dress. I've got my favorite blue jewelry on, which you can probably hear a bit of a rattle on, a little bit of lipstick. We've had a cup of tea this morning and some coffee, so I've re-caffeinated, which is one of the great joys and one of the great humours of restarting after Ramadan. And the girls are all dressed up, the kids are dressed up, husband is dressed up, and there was lots of kissing and hugging, so I'm probably sounding slightly hyper with all the sugar and the love. Why not? It's a celebration. With Eid prayers this morning, what happens? So, it's part of the rituals of Eid. There will be some recitations in praise of God.

People will arrive dressed in their finery, as I've described. But actually, Eid is the first day after Ramadan, so it's both a celebration of having completed something which is really momentous. 30 days of fasting, even though people do it every year, is quite an achievement. But side by side with that, it's actually the beginning, it's the first day of the next chapter. And that sense of purpose, renewal, intention, starting afresh is really in the air and in the vibe. So there will be a ritual prayer, slightly different from the usual prayers, but that people will be familiar with. And then there'll be a sermon reminding us of our duties and our excitement of what's going next.

And then, as I said, lots of hugging and kissing, which sounds like lots of fun. I want to turn to Bushra. You moved to the UK from Pakistan when you were eight years of age. And I'm wondering, how does it feel today, thinking back to that little girl who experienced it in Pakistan for a number of years as well? Yeah, it's really, really wonderful to actually see how open celebration of Ramzan and Eid is now compared to when I came when I was eight years old this is in 1960 when actually nobody even knew about Eid or fasting and I remember when I was a secondary school in you know at secondary school and I just used to pretend I was I was dieting during Ramadan,

because nobody knew about it. So also there's a real richness now, we say the Ramadan lights in Oxford Street, we had the, you know, the London Eye lit up last night. So there is a real difference now with an openness and celebration celebration in our schools now. The number of iftars that have happened, the number of assemblies that are done to do with increasing that understanding is phenomenal now. I think this is the first year actually that I noticed, Bush, there was a number of people I knew that are Christian that were fasting in solidarity. Absolutely. In workplaces, lots of people have done this now in terms of colleagues fasting. I remember at school, one of my school friends actually said,

I'm going to try half a day fasting alongside you and so on. And yeah, it just brings the communities together. And the interesting thing with Lent being at the same time roughly as the Ramadan this year has been really really good and we've got Passover coming as well so the three major faiths together are celebrating well celebrating and commemorating the importance of thinking about others, humanity and how much we take things for granting and actually the charity work that we do as well. Which is a big part of it as well. Let's bring in Jermilla, how is it going for you today? I understand you grew up, half of your family was Muslim, the other was not.

And I'm just wondering how Eid felt for you or how it feels today, how you celebrate. So I'm a bit worse for wear this morning. We did eat yesterday and I'm absolutely exhausted, even though I did no driving. My husband did it all. Well, tell me what you did yesterday. Tell me what you did yesterday, Jamila. So we actually went to my side of the family. Usually we go to my husband's side of the family. He's got a big family here. He's of Indian heritage and he's got all his cousins here but we went to my family. My dad's side of the family is Libyan. We went down to Eastbourne where I grew up. We spent a lot of Eid yesterday on the beach which was lovely. It was a very different Eid to my husband's family, my husband's

Eid where all his family are there bringing different desserts. We had more, I think, a quiet Eid, but we went to Eid prayers in the morning, then drove from London to Eastbourne and then back again in the evening. Jamila, is there an expectation that you follow certain older traditions on Eid? I think there are definitely traditions and I've been married a year and a half and I think there are definitely different traditions that my husband's family will follow and then maybe me as someone who grew up kind of between two cultures, I kind of paved my own traditions if that makes sense. A lot of the Eids that I had were at university, the ones I can remember, or spent at university.

So, you know, me and my student friends would make our own traditions. And I think that is something that a lot of Muslims in the UK now who are second, third, fourth generation Muslims are making their own traditions. Because you know, if you want to make a tradition of having ice cream every Eid, why not? Is that one of your traditions? I can see Bushra smiling along with that one. But Jamila, tell me one of your new traditions. I don't know whether it's going to the beach or having ice cream.

Well, no, unfortunately, we heard the ice cream van and my husband was walking around easy trying to find it. We couldn't find it yesterday. But, you know, we always like to go for a walk on Eid, which we did yesterday. It's just a chance, especially when it's so, it can be so chaotic at home. It's just nice to kind of reconnect and have like five, 10, 15 minutes just together. So that's one of the traditions we started. And a lovely one, but of course we often come back to food as we talk about this. Shalina was also talking about the new clothing for herself or or for the children. But Shalina, I was struck that you refer to women during Eid as the chief

memory officers. tell me more. It's such a privileged role but also comes with a lot of responsibility which I'm sure women across all faiths and none of all cultures will feel that sense that having both the tradition and the modern and creating the feeling, the special vibe and almost that sense of longevity that we are responsible for creating those memories for our children in the same way that we treasure the memories that we have of growing up with our parents and in our cultures. And so there is this really fine balance that we're trying to create, which is what are the non-negotiables that give it the Eid feeling or the festival

feeling? What are those enduring elements of the festival that we want to transmit to our children? Because there is a certain importance in longevity and maintaining tradition, but also as Jamilia was saying, what's the emerging, what's in you, what's our own take on it? And I think that is such an important role women play, and culturally happens for lots of women, but it also means there's a pressure that comes with it, like are we going to do it? Are we going to give our children that magic that they need? Are we going to feel like we got the celebration that we deserve? Because we deserve it too, right? As women, we need to celebrate ourselves and what we've achieved. And how do we do that? In a way, that's fun, but also meaningful. And I think Eid al-Adha in particular is a

real balance between the joy but also the meaning and the purpose and I know there'll be lots of Muslims around the country, around the world, actually lots of people who will be feeling the joy of Eid but also really weighing heavy on their shoulders what's happening in the Middle East, what's happening in lots of conflict areas and I think that's certainly a vibe that's come through at the Eid prayers we're at today and in community. So how do we balance all of that, the eternal struggle of women basically? Bushra, before we finish, for a woman who's maybe feeling the pressure, that extra pressure to make Eid special, perhaps she's the Chief Memory Officer, that beautiful term that we

used, what would you say to her? Because you've done a lot of Eids now, both in Pakistan and here. What's your advice? My advice is that each Eid is precious. I mean, I remember the Eids I spent with my mother who actually passed away just at the beginning of COVID, and that legacy of calling people around, being together, just enjoying the day and cherishing it as a memory for the future and so on. So it is really a time for families and extended families, your neighbours who may be non-Muslim, invite them round, share food with them and make it a memorable day for our children and grandchildren to remember and look

back on when we're not perhaps around. And you mentioned food just in my last 15 seconds or so, what is the dish that you are most fond of at this time? Well I think the basic there's loads of different dishes we cook but flour rice is you know a favourite and then you have different curries. My son-in-law made the most superb leg of lamb yesterday, fish and all the other trimmings that go with it. And as already been said, desserts is one of the things that maybe four or five different desserts that people would tuck into. Lovely stuff. By Sreerisheleena Jamila, thank you so much for telling us about your day, your traditions. I hope you have a wonderful time celebrating. You can follow the BBC's live coverage of Ede on BBC One and watch on iPlayer online.

That's it from me, Catriona Balfour with me tomorrow about her new film The Amateur and we'll also look at the problem of missed child maintenance payments. Join me at 10. See you then. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. It's a parent's nightmare. I said, oh it's a boy and I was holding my hands out ready to cuddle him and they Next time. I don't want this woman to leave this earth not knowing what happened to her son. The Gift from Radio 4 with me, Jenny Clemon. Listen now on BBC Sounds.