Religious war over school dress codes

• Schools, pupils and parents are more and more getting embroiled into wrangles over religious attire

On Tuesday, a high school student walked into the Nation Centre with her parents. The student in Form Two at Chogoria Girls in Meru County was still in her school uniform: a maroon skirt, white blouse, maroon pullover and white socks in black shoes.

But in addition to this, Tabitha Wangui, 17, wore a white headscarf, the reason she claimed she wasn’t at school then. According to her father Gabriel Macharia, the student was told to go home and bring her parents because she refused — then supposedly incited her colleagues — never to remove the headscarf.

Coming from the Akorino denomination, the parents argue that the girl should not remove the headscarf — a head dress worn by members of this religious community in what they say follows biblical teachings.

“It is taught in the Bible that a woman should cover herself to the head to preserve herself against sin. We only think the school should support this because we want to raise children with morals,” said Mr Macharia.

Curiously, the student’s school identity card has her photo with the head dress. It was taken, and accepted, last year when Tabitha was joining Form One.

Accepted headscarf

“We don’t know why the school reneged a year after it had accepted her to wear the headscarf. We think the child is being subjected to suffering for nothing because there’s nothing else she has done wrong,” claimed her mother, Ms Margaret Njeri.

The parents claimed further, that they had paid all the fees required, and observed any other conditions the school had required of students.

“We bought every item the school wanted. We have also paid all the fees for her. What we don’t understand is why the school didn’t indicate earlier that religious dress would not be accepted,” continued her father.

According to the suspension chit given to Tabitha, she had been charged with “indiscipline (incitement)”. It was signed by her deputy principal, Ms Lucy Nyaga.

When the Nation contacted the school, Ms Nyaga said Tabitha had been sent home “for an issue of discipline”. But she declined to discuss the nature of the mistake the girl had committed, saying she has no permission to divulge information concerning her students.

This conflict comes just a week after another pupil in Nakuru County was embroiled in a fight with her school over her religious attire in what is slowly turning out to be a controversial national subject.

At Jacaranda Primary school in Nakuru County, Martha Nduta and Timothy Kuria claimed the school told them to go and look for a school for the Akorinos if they insisted their daughter should stick to the headscarf.

The two incidents come in the wake of case filed last year by a girl prophesying the Islamic faith when she sought to compel Kenya High School to allow her to wear her head-dress commonly known as the Hijab.

The school put up a spirited fight to have the application rejected. It asked judge Daniel Musinga to sustain the school rules. Head teacher Rosemary Saina argued that allowing the application would make Muslim girls look different, conspicuous, and special, favoured and thus attract unprecedented and undesirable disruptive attention from school community. The case is still undetermined.

The conflicts seem to pose a question that education policy makers should address quickly. Should pupils have their right of way over religious matters in schools? Or do schools have a right to refuse admission to those who defy the laid rules?

According to the Ministry of Education, there are over 15,000 public primary schools and over 3,500 public secondary schools. Churches and mosques sponsor many of them. However, schools are often allowed to make rules for discipline, based on Ministry of Education policies, and to admit all qualified students from all backgrounds.

Most of these pupils and students sticking to their religious attire argue that the Constitution guarantees them the freedom of worship, and that it should be superior to the school regulations.