In what is believed to be a first, a school district in Virginia is to allow students a day off from their classes in order to attend protests.

Fairfax County will permit students in seventh through 12th grades, aged 11-18, one excused absence each school year for loosely defined “civic engagement activities”.

The system will affect 188,000 students – Fairfax County is one of the dozen largest school districts in the US. It comes into effect on January 27.

Ryan McElveen, a member of the school board, who introduced the policy, said he believed it was the first such policy in the US.

“I think we’re setting the stage for the rest of the nation with this,” he said.

“It’s a dawning of a new day in student activism, and school systems everywhere are going to have to be responsive to it.”