While not foreseeing challenges relative to students wearing natural hairstyles to schools come the new academic year beginning in September, Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams has implored parents to ensure that their children wear “simple hairstyles” to schools.
Williams has also declared that schools in Jamaica have allowed students with dreadlock hairstyles to attend their respective institutions without any issues.
She claimed that schools have now refrained from requiring students with those hairstyles to wear coverings for their hair.
“I just want it to be said that… currently in several schools, there are students who attend schools with locks, and they are okay, they are embraced, they’re doing well,” she stated.
The minister’s overall comments came at a media conference hosted by the ministry on Friday, this after the Court of Appeal ruled earlier in the week that Kensington Primary School in St Catherine had breached the constitutional rights of a child with dreadlocks when it denied her access to the institution.
The child who was five-year-old child at the time of the incident, was denied access to the school in 2018 when her parents refused to cut her hair.
The school board contended that it was justified in its decision.
The parents of the child filed a lawsuit against the school, but the Constitutional Court, in 2020, dismissed the case on the basis that no constitutional right had been breached.
An appeal was filed on the grounds that the judges who heard the matter in the Constitutional Court of the Supreme Court erred in their decision, and the Court of Appeal partly overturned that decision.
In handing down its ruling, the appellate court found that the child’s right to freedom of expression and the right to equitable treatment by a public authority, were violated.
On Friday, Williams recalled that last year she made it known that “no child should be required to wear covering on their hair if they have locks (dreadlocks), and the schools that have been doing that, they have stopped requiring it.”
For the upcoming 2024-2025 school year relative to natural hairstyles, Williams said: “We’re not expecting that we’re going to have a major issue come September, because where we are as a society today, just listening to what people are saying, there is a full embrace of our culture, our hair, our African heritage and so on.”
Longstanding issues have arisen over time between parents and school administrators over respective school’s dress and grooming policy. The rules relative to hairstyles for male and female students have been particularly contentious at times.
Williams reminded that the ministry’s dress and grooming policy is a “framework” for schools, “against which we will measure the individual school’s policy”.
She said that, for example, every school should have such a policy in place, which should not be discriminatory, among other things.
“In the framework, we will emphasise our natural hair, and the embrace that we should have of that,” said Williams.
“I would have said this many, many times to parents, to please send their children to school with simple hairstyles so (that) there’s a balance,” she added.
The ministry will continue emphasising that message to parents, Williams stated.
