School closures, Legal challenges to the CPS, Family Secrets

The Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson has confirmed that all schools will close in England and Wales and there’ll be no GCSE or A Level exams this summer. How are schools and pupils proposing to cope? Ruby is a 17-year old pupil in Somerset, due to take her A levels shortly. Charlie is 25 and is doing an access course to be a paramedic. It involves cramming 2 years of A-levels into 1 year. Carolyn Roberts is the Head Teacher at Thomas Tallis School in South London.

A legal challenge over alleged changes to Crown Prosecution Service policy on bringing charges in rape cases was dismissed by the high court this week. The Centre for Women’s Justice brought the case on behalf of the End Violence Against Women Coalition following concerns over steep falls in rape charges and convictions in recent years - at a time when an increasing number of women have been making rape complaints to police. Human rights lawyer, Harriet Wistrich, clarifies why the case was brought and someone we are calling Olivia explains why she wanted her case to be one of the 21 cases included as evidence.

The writer Sali Hughes has been talking to women about objects in their lives that are important to them. The things we cherish aren’t always vintage, or even antique - or even expensive. The TV presenter and chef Andi Oliver talks about a one-of-a-kind blanket knitted by her mother.

And in today’s family secret is that of a woman we are calling ‘H’ whose whole life has been shaped by the sense that there was something she wasn’t being told. Finding out the truth at the age of 17 at a family party and the realisation that everyone else in the family knew all along made her ill. H tells Jo Morris her story.