Schools in Manchester may close if more than 40% of pupils were to be absent on religious festival days. Pupils being taken out of school to attend non-Christian festivals account for a "sizeable chunk" of absences, according to Manchester City Council. The council is considering the proposal put forward last month in a report designed to tackle the problem of unauthorised school absences. Scheduling teacher training days on religious festivals was also suggested. Manchester City Council wants to tackle religious absenteeism Schools are open for 190 days per year with an extra five days for training. The council has proposed that statutory teacher training days could be timed to coincide with non-Christian festivals, though they have made clear that no specific religion was mentioned in the report. John Edwards, the council's deputy director of children's services for Manchester City Council, said: "We encourage schools to work with local faith groups to develop guidance and co-ordinate the times taken for religious observance. "It is about asking schools to plan ahead and to try not to put themselves in the position where they could be asked to allow additional absence." The decision would ultimately rest with individual headteachers, and a spokesperson for the council has stressed that the report is for guidance only. Overall, time off for religious reasons accounted for 3.78% of absences, compared to illness, which the council says is the reason for more than half of time off outside of school holidays. But the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, Douglas Murray, says the proposals could cause division. "This idea is very regressive because people are being treated according to the background they're born into. "This is the opposite of what we want to do, and risks fragmenting society." Currently, the Pupil Registration Regulations 2006 state that legitimate absences can only be allowed for religious reasons 'on a day exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body to which the parent belongs'.



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