Race, Class and Coloniality in Jamaican Education Policy & Practice

Abstract

The inception of Jamaica’s education system was built based on European settler colonial ideologies and White supremacist logic. Almost two centuries after the abolition of slavery and over six decades after independence from British rule, colonial vestiges pervade Jamaican education policy and practice, resulting in the continued marginalisation of Black students from low-income backgrounds. Despite the commissioning of multiple reports on the state of the education system, these racist and classist injustices persist. In this article, we examine social justice issues at the nexus of national education policy and school leadership practice in Jamaican public schools based on our reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with two Jamaican education policymakers, five education researchers and four public school leaders, alongside Jamaica’s National Student Dress and Grooming Policy Guidelines 2018. Our findings highlight a hierarchical relationship among stakeholder groups in the creation and implementation of Jamaican education policy. Our findings also highlight four themes suggesting that this results from deeply ingrained valorisation of Eurocentric values in policy design that leads to heightened tensions between the Ministry of Education and Youth (MOEY) and school administrators at the level of policy implementation, distraction of school staff from teaching and learning, and disproportionate exclusion of Black students from low-income backgrounds. Implications from our study are the need for stronger cohesion among education policy stakeholders, the incorporation of social justice in teacher and leader preparation and the integration of critical pedagogies at all levels of the Jamaican education system.

1. Introduction

Inequities based on race, ethnicity, skin colour, gender, social class, and language are persistent and deeply ingrained features of Jamaican social life (Altink, 2019; Jackson et al., 2024). With an education system rooted in a history of British colonialism (Hylton & Hylton-Fraser, 2022), public schools remain among the places where discrimination is most visible and through the application of dress codes at local public educational institutions (PEIs) is one such example.

British scholars Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly (2018) argue that policing of Black aesthetics has not been given the academic attention it merits. This is especially true in Jamaica against the backdrop of the historical persecution of the Rastafarian community (McPherson & Semaj, 1980), the government’s banning of Black activists like Walter Rodney (Jamaica Gleaner, 1968) and the high instances of racial disproportionality of school exclusion (Simmonds, 2022a, 2022b). Such practices, as Gillborn (2005, 2006) posits, have become entrenched to the point of normalisation. An urgent, critical and decolonial response from the local researchers, system leaders and school leaders is needed to reverse these practices, which heralds the need for this and similar studies.

This study examines student dress and grooming policies within Jamaican secondary PEIs and how stakeholder relationships influence educational policymaking and its implementation. Below, we trace relationships between race and class hierarchies in Jamaican society originating from British settler colonialism and Jamaica’s current education system. We then present our multimethod qualitative approach. Our findings follow, highlighting the hierarchical engagement of education’s stakeholders and social injustices that a lack of authentic engagement creates, followed by our key recommendations to address these findings.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Racio-Classist Discrimination in Jamaican Society

Racism and classism are interwoven organising forces within Jamaican society and manifest in how Jamaican identities are understood. Omi and Winant (2015, p. 160) describe racial formation as “a way of making up people”. Concurring, Miller (2021, p. 20) points out that in society’s constructions and projections of racialised identities, “it does not matter whether [society sees] wrongly or not”. The construction of racialised categories in Jamaica is primarily concerned with disjunctions between groups based on skin colour and hair texture, which originated during European colonisation (Hall, 2017) but which still exist in contemporary society (Brissett, 2019; Miller, 2021).

Classism, also born from European colonisation, continues to adversely affect Jamaican society (Altink, 2019; Hall, 2017). Land-owning and enslaving White people existed at the top of the hierarchy as a direct result of their wealth (Altink, 2019; Hall, 2017). This allowed them to exert power over the Indigenous Taino people and later those from the African continent during the Transatlantic trafficking of enslaved peoples (Yancy, 2008). This dichotomy gave way in the period between the abolition of slavery and the beginning of indentureship. Indentureship saw the arrival of Asians as free workers, occupying a higher class status than Black people. Hypergamy became a means of social mobility, indicating the intersection of class and race (Hall, 2017, p. 26). Miscegenation within these unions often produced children whose skin colour was neither distinctly White nor Black, and so blurred the class/wealth-colour correlation, leading to a more complicated form of racism that Altink (2019) dubs ‘shadism’. These intersections of race and class often determined access to education (Hylton & Hylton-Fraser, 2022; Jackson et al., 2024).

2.2. Jamaican Student Dress and Grooming Policies

Jamaica’s education system, created as a means of sustaining European colonialism, continues to be guided by policy steeped in colonial traditions (Jackson et al., 2024). Tensions arising from school dress codes that do not reflect local contexts are neither new nor unique to Jamaica (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly, 2018). Jamaica’s context reflects a tug-of-war among stakeholders regarding whether policies should continue reflecting colonial traditions or adopt more contemporary styles, with hair grooming being the main issue (Radio Jamaica News, 2022). As Joseph-Salisbury and Connelly (2018) rightfully argue, the policing of Black students’ hair is best situated within the context of “socio-racial conditions that function to subjugate Black people”. Schools, therefore, become tools of social control linked to “historical antecedents in the trans-Atlantic trafficking, enslavement and colonisation of African peoples” (Joseph-Salisbury & Connelly, 2018, p. 2).

By intentionally or otherwise embedding the norms of white European colonisers, we contend that dress policies perpetuate social injustices to successive generations of Jamaicans. This position is similar to Gillborn’s (2005, p. 485), who argues that racism is a “multifaceted, deeply embedded and often taken-for-granted aspect of power relations.” Gillborn continues:

“…although race inequity may not be a planned and deliberate goal of education policy neither is it accidental. The patterning of racial advantage and inequity is structured in domination, and its continuation represents a form of tacit intentionality on the part of white powerholders and policy-makers”.

(Gillborn, 2005, p. 485)

Therefore, if the social injustices related to student dress codes are to be resolved, all stakeholders must be meaningfully and equitably engaged in the policy process.

Policy development in Jamaica happens at three levels: National, Institutional and Operational (Cabinet Office, 2017). These processes occasionally overlap, and each has specific stakeholder engagement mechanisms. The National Student Dress and Grooming Policy Guidelines 2018 (NSDGP) is an example of national policy from which individual PEIs set their dress codes as institutional policy. Yet the Ministry of Education & Youth (MOEY) has positioned it as guidelines instead of policy (National Student Dress and Grooming Guidelines, 2018). However, the MOEY has provided neither a definition of policy nor sufficient reasons why this document would fall outside such contexts. Contextualising policy, we reference Ball’s (1994) definition of policy as “text and action, words and deeds, it is what is enacted as well as what is intended” (p. 10). We also refer to Rizvi and Lingard’s (2009) definition as “the production of the text, the text itself, ongoing modifications to the text and processes of implementation into practice” (p. 5). Finally, Jamaica’s government defines national policy as “a course of action to be taken by the Government to resolve a given problem or interrelated set of problems” (Cabinet Office, 2020, p. 1). Taken together, these definitions offer a robust contextualisation of policy within which the NSDGP falls. Having concluded that this document is a policy, we turn to the issue of its contents.

Existing literature suggests the problems that this policy aims to address date back to the 1970s, climaxing with a student-led protest in Jamaica’s capital city, Kingston, which local police were deployed to suppress (Jamaica Gleaner, 1971a, 1971b). Before this policy, the only document guiding student attire in Jamaican schools was Ministry Circular 33/78, which only addressed the unconstitutional exclusion of Rastafari students (National Student Dress and Grooming Guidelines, 2018). Though wider in scope than circular 33/78, the NSDGP is still lacking in that it does not definitively outline what is permissible as policy within individual PEIs. Further, its vague language and refusal to address how to handle situations where individuals or institutions operate contrary to policy render it of little effect. The unfortunate corollary is that PEIs have selectively interpreted the document and have acted in ways which have left them and the MOEY divided on the matter altogether. Nowhere is this more evident than PEIs consistently barring students from campuses based on attire while the MOEY continues to decry the practice (Francis, 2023; Simmonds, 2022a).

3. Methodology & Methods

Our study deploys a qualitative multi-method approach underpinned by a critical realist epistemology (Matthews & Ross, 2010). Below we outline our positionalities, data collection through semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis and approach to thematic analysis, as well as our ethical considerations.

3.1. Researcher Positionalities

3.1.1. Stephen

As a Black Jamaican man who, based on demographic analyses of Jamaica’s population alongside its colonial history (e.g., Deason et al., 2012), is very likely of West African descent, I hold deeply anti-colonial values. Raised as a Christian, I have also spent most of my life attending and working in church-owned schools. As such, a significant portion of my life has been spent internalising a Christian, and therefore profoundly colonial, value system. These two conflicting elements of my identity are akin to Du Bois’ image of “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois & Lewis, 2003, p. 45). My research interrogates the same social injustices I encountered as a student and that I was party to as a teacher and administrator. Here, like Tuhiwai Smith (2021, p. 8), I “research back” for two inextricably linked reasons. The first is to talk back to both versions of myself and to actors within a colonial education system. The second is to use theory as a “location of healing” (hooks, 1994, p. 59) for the traumas of colonialism that still linger in current education policy and practice.

3.1.2. Robin

As a White man, I have benefited from many of the oppressive ideologies investigated in this research. I was also raised in colonial societies—both a former seat of empire and a settler colonial society—in which the norms and dispositions of whiteness were idealised as the norm in the societies where I lived and the standard to which other countries should aspire. These norms also applied to my own education, which focused largely on the contributions of other White people and in which there were numerous examples of people who demonstrated that I, too, could be successful in higher education institutions. Therefore, while the topics and questions explored in this research are of significance to the field of education policy research and enhance my own understanding of my own educational experiences, they are not based upon these experiences, and I am reliant upon Author 1 and other previous research by scholars who have utilized their experience as racialized minorities to generate questions and understandings of educational policy and society.

3.2. Data Collection

Although time-intensive, semi-structured interviews offer flexibility and have been identified as a form of critical race methodology particularly useful for creating stories that contain narrative truth (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Delgado (1989, p. 2438) further argues in favour of methods such as interviews as they can “jar the comfortable dominant complacency that is the principal anchor dragging down any incentive for reform”.

As shown in

Table 1. Breakdown of Participants by Professional Categories.

Category	Participant Pseudonym
Academic Researcher	Alex
	August1
	Jamie
	Robin
	Taylor
PEI Administrator	Ariel
	Kim
	Shannon
	Sydney2
Policymaker	Dawson
	Morgan

, interviews were conducted with education policymakers, PEI administrators and academic researchers with expertise relevant to educational policy. Each of the stakeholder groups was chosen to mirror the groups described as involved in the process of developing the NSDGP. Students were not recruited as this presented several logistical issues, including negotiating caregiver consent and student assent, which would have pushed the project beyond institutional timelines. Following ethical approval from the University of Bristol’s Research Ethics Board and the Jamaican Ministry of Education & Youth, participants were recruited using stratified and purposive sampling based on their depth of knowledge on the matter from the perspectives being considered (Matthews & Ross, 2010).

Interviews were conducted via online videoconferencing software using an interview protocol that covered participants’ understandings of policymaking, their views of their role in the policy process, and an examination of student dress and grooming policy. Before the interview, participants provided informed consent and were assured that their data would be anonymous and confidential through the gender-neutral pseudonyms used in the analysis below.

Eleven interviews were conducted, which met the criterion of theoretical sufficiency (Dey, 1999), meaning they provided an adequate basis for theory generation in the analysis below. While smaller than other qualitative studies, we continued recruiting participants as long as doing so allowed us to generate new themes from the data. This is a limitation in terms of generalizability, but it is consistent with the philosophical underpinning of our methodology. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and participants were offered an opportunity to review transcripts before analysis. Four participants accepted, all of whom indicated their satisfaction and requested no changes.

We also conducted documentary analyses on two sets of documents: the National Student Dress & Grooming Policy Guidelines from the MOEY and field notes from the lead author’s research journal. Analysing the policy document allowed the juxtaposition of participants’ experience with the expectations and formal positions embedded in policy, while the research journal field notes provided a reflexive approach to the research process that clearly documented the role of the researchers (Braun & Clarke, 2022; Finlay, 2021).

3.3. Data Analysis

Data were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) reflexive thematic analysis. We employed a mix of in vivo and eclectic coding (Saldaña, 2013) to ground the analysis in the words of the participants (in vivo) while allowing me the flexibility to record and interrogate our initial impressions and assumptions (eclectic). Adopting a flexible responsiveness to the data in preference to a formulaic adherence to protocol (Finlay, 2021), we took a recursive approach to coding, which involved us “continuously bending back on [ourselves]—querying assumptions…in interpreting and coding the data” (Braun & Clarke, 2019, p. 594) to generate and refine the themes presented in the analysis below. Analysis resulted in 146 initial codes, which were refined into 115 final codes. The most relevant nine were then grouped into four themes, as outlined in

Table 2. Themes and codes developed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Theme	Codes
“They weren’t teaching us these things”	Blindspots Gazes Rules of Practice
“It’s still this preoccupation with minutiae”	Distractions from teaching and learning Policy or Guideline?
“There is a silent fight”	Student Agency Administrative Agency
“The overhangs are present”	Persistence of Colonialism Attire and Identity Formation

.

Notably, some interview excerpts are presented in Jamaican (Patois), as spoken by the participants. Doing so honours patois’ development as equal parts means of survival and symbol of resistance. It is created by enslaved African peoples from a combination of their native languages, those of their European colonisers, and other ethnolinguistic groups with which they interacted (Philip, 1995). Pre-analysis translation to English loses both literal and affective contexts, as some Jamaican phrases have no direct English translation. Such excerpts are written using the Cassidy-JLU system (Devonish & Carpenter, 2007) and are accompanied by contextual footnotes.

3.4. Temporality and Qualitative Analysis

In their exploration of time as method in qualitative research and scholarship, Facer et al. (2022, p. 4) consider temporality as “the subjective and lived experience of time”. Bastian (2017) similarly highlights the emergence of critical approaches to examining temporality in humanities and social sciences research. Set against Bastian’s findings, Facer et al. (2022) argue for a denaturalisation of time such that researchers can: “see it precisely as sets of relations that draw connections between people, things, objects, institutions and practices in ways that might be reconfigured.” (p. 6).

Agreeing with Facer et al. (2022), we construct participants’ responses based on their making meaning of their experiences surrounding education policy with respect to time. This is evidenced in the tenses of the quotations used as themes under which their responses were coded. Thus, central to our understanding of these findings was conceptualising them as a function of that time (see Figure 1), which cycles between the past (Theme 1) and the present (Themes 2–4). This cycle has the untapped potential of emerging into reimagined, socially just futures for Jamaican education through policy

4. Findings

Our analysis of the data resulted in the generation of the following codes and themes, which inform the central arguments of this paper. Some participants’ narratives are presented in Jamaican Patois as spoken by the participants. Doing so honours patois as a Jamaican Indigenous language that represents survival as well as resistance of the Jamaican people. Patois was created by enslaved Africans from a combination of their native languages, European colonisers, and other ethnolinguistic groups with which they had contact. Such excerpts are written using the Cassidy-JLU system (Devonish & Carpenter, 2007) and are accompanied by contextual footnotes.

4.1. Theme 1: “They Weren’t Teaching Us These Things”

Rooted in logics of the past, this theme explores the ways in which policy is both crafted from and influenced by people’s perspectives within two codes—Blindspots and Gazes—which are antithetical to each other. The main result of this is the encoding of “rules of practice” within policy, which we unpacked as a third eponymous code within this theme.

4.1.1. Blindspots

Several participants highlighted how policy creates ignorance, which then informs practice. One way in which this happens is through the selectivity of the curricular material across time. Notably, most of the current cadre of policymakers and practitioners attended school at a time when curricula foregrounded colonial sentiments.

Another subtler way in which blindspots interplay with policy is through practice. Several participants subconsciously espoused colonial practices, which manifested through their use of language. One example is participants’ use of ‘dreadlocks’ for Rastafarians and the way they style their hair. Dreadlocks is a particularly offensive term for Rastafarians, as it embeds false stereotypes used to justify their persecution (McPherson & Semaj, 1980).

4.1.2. Gazes

Alongside ‘Blindspots’, we examined participants’ discussions of how they and others are directed to make sense of the world through the code ‘Gazes’. This gaze is often colonial.

Traditionally, we are known to be persons of standards, persons that are governed by certain rules, mainly governed by the British and so the matter of uniform and attire is entrenched in our culture and school system. When you talk about identity [and] school identity, cultural identity is something that we are [bound] to uphold.

(Morgan)

In their interview, August discusses how confronting the matter of gazes creates tensions for researchers and administrators who studied outside of Jamaica. They tend to encounter ad hominem attacks when they present policy suggestions tending towards social justice.

The premise is that we come into these Western spaces, and we get additional academic training…and then all of a sudden when we are now doing our research typically in spaces that we are familiar with, we have the dual identity of the insider–outsider, but then as outsider we have this colonial gaze…People might think ‘oh yes! Yu go farin so yu fiil se yu nais now an yu beta dan piipl an yu kyan se dis an yu kyan se dat’3 No! It’s not that! It’s because you’ve had this opportunity to step back from something…and read the things they weren’t giving you to read [locally].

(August)

4.1.3. “Rules of Practice”

“Rules of practice such as ‘values’ and ‘morals’ [exemplify principles] which all parties to the process are assumed to know and have given their consent to abide by” (Hall in Tuhiwai Smith, 2021, p. 54). Often, these are the outcome of blindspots and gazes and the tension between them. Several participants mentioned vaguely defined criteria for dress and grooming, including (in)appropriateness based on sex and age, within the contexts of things like convention and tradition. Additionally, the MOEY’s policy highlights the need for policy to “promote good societal values and attitudes”. Interestingly, much of this rhetoric ignored what August problematises as an “absence of value-neutrality” wherein values and morals vary based on individuals and their contexts.

The (perception of) hierarchisation of stakeholders further compounds the value-neutrality issue. Several participants mentioned being unrepresented or underrepresented.

Sometimes [consultations] do not take place over the extended period that I think they should happen…Perhaps we start a little bit too late, and you know policy has to be implemented by a particular time to address particular needs and so because of the time constraint enough time is not allowed…for proper consultation to be done.

(Dawson)

I want representation. Not necessarily me to go in to be consulted with but we have our associations [who should] not just be called in after the decision is made to be told about it. I want them to be there from the get-go…because it’s not just Head Office or Permanent Secretary and CEO4 and Education Officers.

(Ariel)

[Policymakers] like to talk about ‘yes, we have these stakeholder engagements. That’s a load of BS. Those stakeholder engagements typically include very specific groups in the society. I’ve [spoken] with principals who would [say] ‘yuh hear di Ministry talking bout X? Dem did know dem was goin do dat from long time. Dem just sen’ us something…den dem put it out in di public domain that they had consultation. Dem neva have no consultation wid nobody!’5

(August)

This potentially leads to the present incompatibility between policy and the contexts for which it is made, as discussed in the next section.

4.2. Theme 2: “It’s Still This Preoccupation with Minutiae”

A lack of clarity within policy processes featured prominently during interviews. This, we argue based on the code “Distraction from Teaching and Learning”, results from how hyper-fixation on minor details within policy distracts students, school staff, and policymakers. As August states: “It should not be that in this day and age this is a problem for students…The level of ridiculousness cannot even be described by my mind. It’s still this preoccupation with minutiae.”

A general sentiment within the field of education is that dress codes are essential in reducing distractions among students. Yet, as Shannon points out, this is not always true.

If I look at my grade eleven alone, my top 5% students in terms of academic performance, their hair is groomed in a non-traditional way…the students who have demonstrated the most difficult behaviour have the ‘schoolboy cut’. There is nothing to say that delinquency is associated with grooming.

Going further, they indicate that policing attire was more distracting for staff than students. “It wasn’t a distraction for [students], but I’m recognising it has become a major sore point for some of our teachers who are more accustomed to the…traditional grooming approach.”

Paramount within the following two comments is that the source of the distraction for administrators and policymakers is that they are often heading in antagonistic policy directions. Kim suggested “I have found it easier to set a policy for the institution than it is to…participate meaningfully in the policy of the government…There is just too much political interference” while Alex indicated that there were “four things you need to be in alignment and moving in the same direction [for effective policy]: The Minister, the Permanent Secretary, the Chairman of whichever entity and the Head of the Agency.”

This antagonistic relationship confounded participants’ distinction between policies and guidelines. Consequently, there is much confusion about the functions of each of these. Most participants agreed that the two were separate constructs but had varying understandings of them, often conflating both ideas. Jamie noted that “Policies are guidelines”, while Morgan described them as “a set of guidelines that is so approved by the organisation to guide and direct activities within said organisation.”

Consequently, at the end of data collection, there still was no consensus regarding an explicit functional delineation between the two. However, across all three groups, as indicated below, there was a general notion of policy being a superstructure from which guidelines are derived for specific contexts.

Dawson, a policymaker suggested that “Policies are standards used to guide the operations of a group, an organisation, or an entity…Guidelines are there to tell people what may be the best route to take in a particular situation.” Administrator Shannon stated that “Policy for me comes from the Ministry…in the Education Regulations 1980…Associated with that, we have a number of bulletins that the Ministry will issue [that] articulates their expectations.” (Shannon)

This conception, however, contrasts with the way that the Student Dress and Grooming Policy Guideline functions—as a set of national guidelines that direct institutional policymaking in the form of student dress codes. This lack of clarity often leads to conflict in establishing the operational boundaries of various stakeholders, as highlighted in Section 4.3. Often, students feel the brunt of this.

4.3. Theme 3: “There’s a Silent Fight”

Fractured relationships among stakeholder groups have given rise to what Kim dubs “a silent fight” currently happening within education. Central to this fight is how stakeholders’ agency interplays with policymaking and implementation. Analysis within this theme led us to create two codes. The first—‘Student Agency’—highlights participants’ views of how policy constrains students’ desires to create their own identities and the implications of this. The second, ‘Administrative Agency’, unpacks how administrators reconciled cognitive dissonances associated with leading the adoption of policy directives that either contravene their personal beliefs, or they perceived not to be ideal for their schools’ contexts.

4.3.1. Student Agency

According to the National Student Dress and Grooming Guidelines (2018, p. 3), “Most Jamaican schools have a Student Dress and grooming policy that…follow[s] a traditional or conventional standard. Implicit in all dress codes is a deprivation of choice in the individual’s mode of dress and grooming”. While true, this raises questions of what standards are used to validate this deprivation and what the provenance of these standards is. As Morgan indicated (Section 4.1.2), these standards are rooted in Jamaica’s problematic colonial history. In addressing this issue, August highlights the role of the egos of authority figures in an unbalanced power dynamic, bolstered by colonial predilections. These egos often take precedence over students’ agency over their own bodies, in turn hindering their development of critical thinking skills.

Wai wi tink wi no av critical tinking in our schools?6 Who is sitting down to have these real conversations with our students and really listening to the things they say? It is about putting egos aside [because] we want our children to be educated. It is stupid to be denying children access to school because dem ier stay dis way and dem ier stay dat way an dem uniform no long enof.7

Extending the matter of critical thinking and agency among students, Sydney problematises how policy hinders students’ ability to choose their own religion and attire themselves accordingly.

At what age can a child decide their religion?…I will have grades eight and nine students say ‘Miss, mi no riili waahn notn fi du wid dem an dem church ting8’ and the child is thinking that they want to be Rasta because they see Rasta as a way of embracing their Blackness, who they are, pushing back against the colonial restrictions and definitions of what is beautiful, and what is right, and what is wrong, and what is educated. Does the child really know enough about being Rastafari that they can say ‘I am Rastafarian’?

4.3.2. Administrative Agency

Navigating agency within the multiple realities in which schools exist requires flexibility. As Morgan highlights:

There is a place for a grooming policy to give [an] overarching dictate with flexibility on the ground in terms of local schools to craft what their school identity will look like and to connect that with the development of the student.

This position, which grants agency to administrators, is supported by the MOEY’s guidelines. On this point, participants voiced concerns based on two things. The first pertains to apprehension about the outcome of using this flexibility. Sydney reflects:

I am not one of those principals who is going to go in the papers for locking students out for their hair or any other such thing. Do you realise the feedback from the Ministry when these things happen? Nobody is going to draw me out for refusing to have students come to school.

Several principals, in speaking of how they make sense of their administrative agency in the policy process, used terms such as “weak”, “unsupported”, “undermined” and “disempowered” when it came to the Ministry endorsing that agency.

The second is how agency is influenced by the duration of an administrator’s tenure and their ability to garner staff support, as well as the ownership of the schools. Consider the following:

“I lead a school whose thoughts are not as liberal as mine. I inherited rules and guidelines that I abide by and am responsible for their implementation… Coming into a new environment…you just have to adapt to certain things.”

(Ariel)

“We are redefining some things now [but] the greatest pushback comes from the traditional teachers—a lot of whom have been in the system for a long time. They have a lot of influence.”

(Sydney)

“There’s a silent fight going on and the Education Act allows certain rights to [grant-aided] institutions such as ours. So, we can set policy here that may not directly and specifically align to the government’s policy in every single way…The school has a little more control especially when it isn’t something defined by the law.”

(Kim)

Of the three participants who are desirous of undoing colonial retentions in their schools’ dress codes, Kim has had the longest administrative tenure, is the head of a grant-aided institution and is more direct about exercising agency. Contrastingly, Ariel and Sydney, with shorter tenures, are more apprehensive. Some traditional high schools, as noted by Sydney, have opted to take a softer approach with the introduction of Natural Hair Clubs and “Afro Days”.

4.4. Theme 4: “The Overhangs Are Present”

While participants fight to move into varied reimagined educational futures, they are constrained by the intransigence of the psychosocial impacts of colonialism. These impacts manifest through the systemic prioritisation of colonial ideals in policymaking and practice. The MOEY note in the NSDGP that “The residual effect of Slavery, Plantation Society and colonialism remain, for example, in a preference for lighter skin colour and straighter hair textures aligned to opportunities for upward social mobility.” Similarly, August highlights that “We are ensconced within a system that is colonial. The overhangs are present. They are enduring.” (August)

Participants reported this as being deeply implicated in children’s self-esteem and identity formation. This MOEY policy acknowledges this.

“The significance of personal appearance grows with the age and maturity of the child and is of particular importance to adolescents seeking to assert self-identity…The seriousness to [adolescents] in dress and grooming as a means of self-expression should not be trivialised.”

Yet participants highlighted how colonial mindsets persist in informing policymaking and implementation and stymie adolescents’ ability to form non-Eurocentric self-identities and how they relate to those around them.

“Is da girl de we dem did put out a skool fi ar ier an iivn wen shi come back wid anoda ierstail is still da girl de dem did put out a skool and she’s gonna have to live with that for the rest of her life9. ‘I was the one that they singled out.’”

(Jamie)

Writ large, social justice issues arising from Jamaican education policy emanate from the persistence of colonial ideologies. These ideologies continue to inform current policy and practice in a perpetual cycle, creating social justice issues. Rectifying this requires future policy and practice being informed by an examination of the past and present factors contributing to the situation highlighted above, alongside deliberate moves to step away from them.

5. Discussion

Our study examines student dress and grooming policies within Jamaican secondary PEIs and investigates how stakeholder relationships influence educational policymaking and its implementation. Our analysis shows how education policy and practice related to such policies in Jamaica perpetuate colonial ideologies, which lead to social injustice. Participants from all three stakeholder groups mentioned the issue of disjointed, insufficient, and often performative stakeholder engagement as a source of discontent within the policy process.

Much of our analysis aligns with key points in existing literature. For example, stakeholder consultations are often cursory and limited in scope, rather than authentic and situated in complex historical contexts (Briassoulis, 2004; Innes & Booher, 2003; Kua, 2007). We also find that shared identities and meanings form a crucial link between education policy and issues such as identity formation and individual agency. Through her scholarship, hooks (1994) argues that educational institutions play a crucial role in students’ identity. This position is simultaneously congruent with the findings of this study and with (auto)ethnographic accounts of Caribbean perspectives from writers such as Lamming (1991), James (2013), and Altink (2019). Hall (2017) perhaps makes the point most poignantly in reflecting that, though during his schooling several parts of the “overwhelmingly Anglo-centric” (p. 113) curriculum were being changed to incorporate Jamaican elements, “much of the salient material and critical aspects of the story were barely acknowledged” (p. 114). Writing on the effect of “happy multiculturalism” in Australia, Sriprakash et al. (2022) identify depictions of whiteness “as good and helpful, a homely, happy, kind and generous host,” while “inclusion and diversity are acceptable only when they are understood not to threaten [the colonial status quo]” (Sriprakash et al., 2022, pp. 74–75). As participants indicated, this currently plays out in Jamaica in such ways as performativity in stakeholder consultations and schools having ‘Natural Hair clubs’ while outrightly banning certain Afrocentric hairstyles.

Crucially, our analysis supports Facer et al.’s (2022) conception of time as inherently relational. In this case, temporality links colonial ideologies, which are deeply ingrained in educational experiences. Imaginations of a decolonised educational future involve a struggle between visions of and the persistent impacts of colonialism.

Taken together, our analysis highlights how Jamaican schools, particularly at the secondary level, infringed on agency among mostly Black students and the lasting effects this has on students’ sense of self. Hall (2017) illustrates the ways in which the colonial overhangs remain through the prioritising of whiteness and proximity to it.

“[Jamaican schools] were designed to cultivate and conscript a British-oriented, subordinate ‘native’ elite [who] would become ‘subjectified’ from the inside by having their heads stuffed with a curriculum devoted to an idea of civilisation to which, it was hoped, they would be motivated to aspire…[The curriculum and how it was taught] valorised the British imagination, ways of life and habits of authority which the colonial authorities believed to be embedded in the…social conventions, manners, values and ideals of the ‘mother country’”.

(p. 117)

Here, Hall—as does Senior (1985)—gestures towards the hidden curriculum, which reinforces colonial ideals through the prioritisation of Eurocentric standards for attire as tradition, which we are bound to uphold despite the identity crisis that it creates for students and the education crisis it creates for the country. On the matter of student dress code, Hall writes: “That these ‘habits and virtues’ really belonged to other people and could only be practised and instituted properly by them in a place very different from ours, was an unsolved puzzle, a nagging anxiety” (Hall, 2017, p. 118).

The spectre of this unsolved puzzle and nagging anxiety from Hall’s 1940s school days, and those of Senior (1985) a decade later in colonial Jamaica, continue to haunt Jamaica’s education system. While the participants who were administrators and policymakers all renounced the idea of excluding students from school because of improper attire, and while the MOEY has advised against it (Bailey, 2021; Thomas, 2021), the practice persists (Jamaica Observer, 2021; Williams, 2022). As recently as 2020, such a move was upheld by the local Supreme Court in a case brought by the parents of a barred Black student (Barnett, 2020; Jamaica Gleaner, 2020).

5.1. Limitations

Our analysis is based on data collected from stakeholders directly involved in the policy process. Future research could expand our analysis through the inclusion of first-hand perspectives from current students, parents, and teachers, as well as a broader set of policy stakeholders.

5.2. Implications for Praxis

Our findings highlight the difficulties that leaders face in decolonising schools and other educational contexts, given the deeply ingrained coloniality of the policy contexts in which they are working. To achieve systemic transformation, we recommended the integration of social justice as a core element to the curriculum of all teacher training and school leader preparation programs, a sentiment echoed by Jackson et al. (2024). Additionally, pulling on Bowleg’s (2021) riff on Bob Marley’s 1980 ‘Redemption Song’, we urge that the time has come for Jamaicans to “emancipate [ourselves] from the business of keeping white [systems and] people happy”. To address this, we recommend the use of critical pedagogies at all levels of the education system to encourage critique towards social justice within schools and, by extension, the wider society.

These suggestions are supported by the work of critical race theorists such as Solórzano (2013) and Cann and DeMeulenaere (2020). Cann and DeMeulenaere (2020, p. 15) posit that such approaches create “real…learning that makes a difference” by challenging students to “identify community problems, devise a way to address those problems and then enact those plans” (Cann & DeMeulenaere, 2020, p. 15) as opposed to perpetuating the status quo.

6. Conclusions

A major finding of this study is that the relationship among stakeholders in Jamaican public schooling is disjointed and hierarchical. PEI administrators and academic researchers reported inadequate representation at integral parts of the policy process while also reporting that the views of policymakers and technocrats are preferentially prioritised. This results in a created policy that disproportionately represents the perspectives of policymakers who are often far removed from the realities of the contexts within which the policy is to be enacted. Participants reported this to be true of Jamaican education policymaking in general, as well as specifically about the student dress and grooming policy. Beyond insufficient representation, PEI administrators reported feeling unsupported and undermined by policymakers at the MOEY in the course of their duties while implementing student dress and grooming policy, per the MOEY’s guidelines.

The misalignment between the MOEY’s overarching policy and the varied contexts of local PEIs has given rise to PEI administrators making adaptations to the policy for their individual schools. The MOEY’s policy guidelines and national policies, such as the Education Act, guarantee administrators this latitude. In most instances, this is to address the inability of students to comply with the policy for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to financial constraints, religious practices, and a desire to exercise their right to bodily autonomy. Notwithstanding these adjustments, the MOEY’s National Student Dress and Grooming Policy Guidelines, as well as the student dress codes at individual PEIs, are rooted in traditions which reify outmoded Eurocentric, colonial ideals. Further, the content of these policies and how these policies are enacted are deeply implicated in the development (or lack thereof) of critical thinking among students, student identity crises and larger societal issues of biased race, class, and gender norms.

Jamaica’s education system continues to embed colonial logics. These overhangs are visible in several forms, including the policy and practices surrounding student dress and grooming in public schools. As Jamaica continues to forge forward as an independent nation, issues of colonial retentions need to be addressed. Thus, a critical reflection on the provenance of our education policy positions, followed by policy reform and critical praxis towards social justice for all involved, is needed.