Au­thor­i­ties at the St Charles High School in Tu­na­puna are tight-lipped, fol­low­ing com­plaints from two moth­ers that their daugh­ters have al­leged­ly been sus­pend­ed since the start of the school year over their braid­ed hair­styles.

The par­ents of the two girls, Tri­cia Os­bourne and Heather A-Dann, vis­it­ed Guardian Me­dia to lodge their com­plaints pub­licly, say­ing they were very up­set and are speak­ing out about the treat­ment met­ed out to their teen girls, who both have braid­ed hair­styles.

Os­bourne said the treat­ment was noth­ing short of vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

“Last week Wednes­day, I’m not sure of the date ex­act­ly, af­ter be­ing brought up in front of the as­sem­bly, they told her about her hair, and sent her to her class. While the class was go­ing on, the teacher called her to come up in front of the class and ex­plained to the class why she was called in front of the as­sem­bly to talk about her hair. And she had to ex­plain to the class about her hair, which was to­tal­ly un­nec­es­sary. It sounds like vic­tim­is­ing to me,” Os­bourne said of her daugh­ter’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

A-Dann is al­so con­cerned that the girls were sent home in the first week of Jan­u­ary with­out any of­fi­cial let­ters of sus­pen­sion. She is de­mand­ing that her daugh­ter be al­lowed back in­to the class­room and is con­tend­ing that her rights were breached by the school’s ac­tions.

“What we would like to get out of this is­sue is that it shows so many breach­es where rights are con­cerned. We would like to have some sort of rep­re­sen­ta­tion on this mat­ter. I don’t want to take it in­to the do­main where it has any­thing to do with eth­nic­i­ty, but maybe, I don’t know. In this so­ci­ety, we need to en­sure that we are guid­ed ac­cord­ing­ly,” A-Dann said.

The two moth­ers are al­so con­cerned about the im­pact of the in­def­i­nite sus­pen­sion on their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion, but say all ef­forts to have the sit­u­a­tion rec­ti­fied, in­clud­ing com­plaints to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, have fall­en on deaf ears.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to the school’s vice pres­i­dent for com­ment on the claim yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, through her as­sis­tant, she said she had no com­ment to make on the mat­ter.

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said she had no in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the re­port­ed sus­pen­sions. How­ev­er, she point­ed out that the re­cent­ly an­nounced Na­tion­al Schools Hair Code, which al­lows for braid­ed hair­styles to be worn in pub­lic schools, was in place.

Ac­cord­ing to the code and as it re­lates to this par­tic­u­lar case,

Locs, twists, plaits, afros and corn­rows, shall be al­lowed for all stu­dents, in com­pli­ance with in­di­vid­ual School Hair Rules.

Fe­male stu­dents shall be al­lowed to wear hair ex­ten­sions, in­clud­ing weaves and braids, in com­pli­ance with in­di­vid­ual School Hair Rules.