Member

In 2022, the EHRC delivered non-statutory guidance to schools to try to ensure that they do not indulge in hair discrimination. However, a simple scan through the news pages shows that this is a continuing problem. I go to a case in May 2024 of 12 year-old Farouk James in London, who was excluded from school and threatened with expulsion because of his hair. His father comes from Ghana. He requested a cultural and medical exemption. The school refused to grant it. In 2023, there was the case of Jade Samuels, the mother of a child who was at Bishop Challoner Catholic College in Birmingham who had neat non-coloured braids that had a very discreet heart shape in the braiding. Again, she was forced to sit at the isolation tables at lunchtime. There was another case in 2023, of Mayla, at the Barr Beacon School in Walsall. For a wedding, she had had hair braids that had some red colouring incorporated in the braids. Again, she was put into isolation, while other pupils in her class had hair that was dyed in colours.