Skip school to picket G8, says Geldof

Children should play truant from school to protest at the G8 summit in Edinburgh next month, Bob Geldof said today.

Spending two days picketing the conference of world leaders would be a better use of their time than attending lessons, claimed the Live Aid organiser.

Tony Blair will host George Bush and the other leaders of the world's biggest economies at a heavily guarded conference beginning on 5 July. Previous summits have been targeted by violent anti-capitalist protesters.

Geldof said that children - led by their teachers - should try to persuade the gathering of prime ministers and presidents to cancel Africa's debts. He urged a groundswell of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" classroom rebellion. "I want every school to decamp on 5 July," Geldof told The Times Educational Supplement.

He added: "What's more important - learning geometry or remembering these two days all your life because you conceivably helped tip the world a little in favour of the weak?"

John Dunford, leader of he Secondary Heads Association, said Geldof was "setting a very bad example to children".