AKASH SAMA­ROO

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, has said while all 850 schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go must abide by the new Na­tion­al Hair Code come the next aca­d­e­m­ic year, the in­sti­tu­tions will still have au­ton­o­my on how it is en­forced.

There has been some push­back fol­low­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's an­nounce­ment that in the new school term, stu­dents will be al­lowed to have some hair styles which were pre­vi­ous­ly banned. These in­clude afros, locs, twists, braids and hair ex­ten­sions.

For­mer Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, called it an at­tack on the in­de­pen­dence of de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools as en­shrined in the Con­cor­dat.

How­ev­er, in an in­ter­view this morn­ing on "The Bubb Re­port", Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said it is still up to the schools to come up with their own rules based on the Min­istry's new guide­lines.

"En­gage a hair com­mit­tee, par­ents, stu­dents and the school's ad­min­is­tra­tion, and you’re now with­in the con­text of the fact that you're al­low­ing locks, twists, afros, braids, long hair… Trinidad is very mul­ti-cul­tur­al and there­fore we have a range of hair types. So, on the ba­sis of the fact that these are to now be al­lowed at school, you come up for your in­di­vid­ual school the gran­u­lar de­tails. For ex­am­ple, the length of a girl's braids… for ex­am­ple the length of nat­ur­al hair… Are you go­ing to al­low it to be as long as it can be or will there be some re­stric­tion? What is okay for a boy in terms of the size of an afro?"

The Min­is­ter said it was im­por­tant to en­sure schools still had some in­de­pen­dence in this process and this coun­try's mul­ti-cul­tur­al school sys­tem had to be re­spect­ed.