A SCHOOL at the centre of a controversy over children being asked to sing a Lithuanian song won tumultuous applause as it staged a multi-cultural singing festival.
Thomas Clarkson Academy, Wisbech, was packed with 200 parents, a civic delegation and a Lithuanian Embassy representative for the hour-long concert by pupils from the town’s Peckover Primary School.
Head teacher Sarah Conant said: “It was an absolutely fantastic afternoon which attracted lots of positive comments from people who attended.
“The point was to have a multi-cultural interaction which celebrated our diversity.”
The concert was a far cry from a week earlier when a group of parents organised a petition and claimed children were coming home in tears after being forced to learn the Lithuanian song.
Mrs Conant, faced at one stage with a media outcry that saw 600 people comment online to the Daily Mail’s version of events, responded by keeping precisely to what had been planned.
It was a universally popular decision by the majority of parents and townsfolk as children took part in a concert that embraced all eight different languages spoken in the school.
Guests at Thomas Clarkson Academy, where the concert took place, included the Mayor, Councillor Samantha Hoy, and the leader of Wisbech Town Council, Councillor David Oliver.
Mrs Conant said: “Staff and children had a fantastic time.”
The children sang a range of songs in a high-energy concert opened by children saying hello in Lithuanian, Russian, Polish, Latvian, Mandarin, Greek, Turkish and English.
The event was funded with the help of a cultural fund grant from Cambridgeshire County Council and is the first time that the school has organised a festival on a grand scale.
Mrs Conant, in a letter circulated to parents in advance, insisted alternative arrangements were available to those who did not want their children to attend.
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