General News
20 September, 2022
Students caught up in hair dispute unenrolled
The two Highview College students of African descent caught up in a hair dispute at Highview College earlier this year have now been unenrolled by the school. Safhira and Amayah Rowe, missed a week of school in July after principal Melinda Scash...
The two Highview College students of African descent caught up in a hair dispute at Highview College earlier this year have now been unenrolled by the school.
Safhira and Amayah Rowe, missed a week of school in July after principal Melinda Scash told them they could not return to classes until they tied their hair up.
The year 10 and 11 students’ father is from Ghana and both girls have their hair braided and say it is painful and puts pressure on their heads to tie it back.
Both girls returned to school shortly after, following extensive media coverage and remained at school largely without issue until last week, when the school unenrolled the two students.
The girls’ mother, Rebecca Rowe, said she had received an email from Ms Scash stating her daughters’ enrolments had been cancelled, citing continued poor behaviour and absence from class.
Ms Scash was contacted for comment by The Advertiser but declined.
Ms Rowe acknowledged one of the girls had skipped their final two classes for the day as it was their final day at school, the first time they had ever done so, however believes the unenrolment was a result of the family speaking out about the school’s uniform policy earlier in the year.
“In their time at Highview, the girls never had any kind of warning for behavioural issues, they’re both employed, are members of the Central Goldfields Shire Youth Council and have both represented the school in extracurricular activities — just a few weeks ago, Amayah was selected by the school to attend a leadership seminar because she showed that kind of initiative,” she said.
“When the girls returned to school following the dispute about hair being tied back there were no issues at all but after a couple of weeks we received two uniform infringements on the same day.
“One infringement was for having plain gold sleeper earrings that were two millimetres larger than standard and the other was because one of my daughters had a seam on the back of her navy tights which isn’t part of the school uniform policy.
“It seems the school’s stringent uniform policy isn’t applied to everyone and I believe the principal has gone above and beyond to target my daughters.”
Safhira had been enrolled to start next term at a different school and following standard procedure, the school sent a request for information to Highview and Ms Rowe said it was on the day the school received the request that the girls’ enrolments were cancelled.
“My youngest daughter Safhira decided she would be better off changing schools and we arranged for her to start somewhere else,” she said.
“Amayah, who is five school weeks out from her year 11 exams is not enrolled in any other school — her plan has always been to see out her VCE at Highview.
“Now she’s left unenrolled in any school and has no idea how she’s going to get her exams done.
“She has been looking at a school in Ballarat to move to for year 12 but they can’t accept her unless she passes VCE, particularly English, at Highview.”
Ms Rowe, who has been barred from attending the school campus on accusations of being aggressive, lodged a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission in July regarding the hair issue.
She said at the time that her daughters had been excluded from the school because of their race.
“This whole incident has been traumatic for us, it’s just so upsetting,” she said.
“Amayah has no school to go to now and this is something that will affect her for the rest of her life. It’s disappointing Highview can’t step up and be the school it promises.”