They don't learn....

First it was "Wintermas" in place of "Christmas" because they decided that the original name might offend non-Christians.

Now multiculturalism could be revived in the east London councils of Waltham Forest and Newham.

This time the proposal is to close schools down for the annual celebrations of Eid ul-Ftr for the Muslims, Diwali for the Hindus and Guru Nanak's birthday for the Sikhs.

Perversely there is no gesture to the Jews, who outnumber Sikhs in the area, nor to any smaller minority groups (The Sikhs number only 0.6% of the population, so there may be other small groups approaching this - Buddhists?) There are no Christian days in school term, so what about Ascension Day, Shrove Tuesday or Corpus Christi?

Unless a school has a very large proportion of one particular religious background, it would seem to be better to allow parents to withdraw children for that day, rather than losing three more days for all children. (The proposal would not apply to Roman Catholic or Church of England schools.

The ludicrous nature of the proposal is in deciding how many other "religions" should be included, and how many children of one of them would have to be on the school roll for a closure to occur. If there is one child of Jedi father, or one vegetarian sun-worshipper, would the school close for everyone? What if the child happened to be away that week, for whatever reason? Would the school still close?

Sensible voices are already suggesting that the idea be dropped. Let us hope that common sense for once will prevail!