[Article] Students barred from exams over haircuts

ANarcho-Munk

Hmm, I guess if they were being suspended the whole time it isn't as bad as jsut randomly suspending some young fella with short hair, but still it's was pretty terrible bad timing!

spurious

He won't be sacked. At most, it will be pointed out to him he doesn't have the right to stop students sitting an exam they have entered and which is being run under the auspices of an external organisation, merely using rooms within his school.
Again though, he would have known that - I can't help thinking there is more to this than we are hearing.

Stark

Sniippe wrote:

Rules are rules, if the lads knew they weren't allowed to do it then did it they should be punished.

Ah, good old "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". Or in this case, sabotaged education for a haircut.

Sniipe

Then, they prob knew they were being watched. Knew the school rules... perhaps they should have been expelled earlier.

oRlyYaRly

spurious wrote:

He won't be sacked. At most, it will be pointed out to him he doesn't have the right to stop students sitting an exam they have entered and which is being run under the auspices of an external organisation, merely using rooms within his school.
Again though, he would have known that - I can't help thinking there is more to this than we are hearing.

Basically:

They're horrible people.

They were sent home purely because of their hair.

They've been warned and suspended a million times before about this.

They wouldn't have done well anyway.

BMH

Oh please, "hard boys" are generally from disadvanged area and are just acting up for attention. Do you really think banning them from the JC is going to help their development?

Sounds like a spur of the moment descision that he was too pompous to retract.

I can hear it on the radio in the background.

Jello

lilmissprincess wrote:

"no punk hairstyles or unnaturally coloured hair"

Now that's discrimination!

My school probably don't know what a punk is.....''ugh it's 'Green Day' isn't it?''

Ah, just listening to RTÉ Radio 1, and two of boys sat their exams today in a special location but one of the boys was refusing to sit their exam in a special location.

Sniipe

Stark wrote:

Ah, good old "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth". Or in this case, sabotaged education for a haircut.

I know its a bit agressive of me. There always have been trouble makers, there always will be trouble makers. I don't know if the problem is getting worse, but the rules still stand. If the rule on hair cuts was too much, then there should have been something said about it (maybe there has been) - perhaps a petition; easily organised by the students.
I'm all for short hair cuts. I don't have it 0 back and sides and 2 on top like the lad referred to on the Joe Duffy show. Its a bit too much for me. 2 back and sides is the lowest I'd go now. I had a 1 all over at 18 and 19.
ranting mindlessly on, I'll stop.

lilmissprincess

Also the fact we've payed like 70 something euro for these exams..

cdol

So they probably thought lets shave our heads heads and see what he can do now that schools over??would i be right??
God i say the principal will be regreting his decision for a while, like why didnt he wait till next year, or come up with another punishment. Because stopping them from doing exams is like just looking for trouble! Stilll feel kind of sorry for him because hes going to get a heck of a lot of bad press over these guys who didnt give a damn about the JC anyways!

Sniipe

1 of them doesn't want a special sitting of the exams... thats just madness! At that age the parent should force him/her to do it.

Stark

BMH wrote:

Oh please, "hard boys" are generally from disadvanged area and are just acting up for attention. Do you really think banning them from the JC is going to help their development?

Sounds like a spur of the moment descision that he was too pompous to retract.

I can hear it on the radio in the background.

I normally judge a person by who they are and not by what kind of life they've had, so I've little sympathy for "hard boys". Had they been disruptive during their time in school, then they deserved to be suspended. Too many students suffer in their education because of an over-zealous desire to protect a tiny minority.

But kicking them out of an important exam when they weren't being disruptive was highly inappropriate and will probably destroy what little hope there is of them turning themselves around.

As for the hair, whether it be shaved or punk. Hair can be means of expression. Restricting that form of expression can only be damaging to a student's emotional well-being in my opinion. The school sounds like it could do well to instigate a decent pastoral care programme in my opinion.

steviec

I feel kind of sorry for the principal, my understanding is that he didn't stop them from sitting the exams, just that they do it at a different location.

One of the lads refused to do it at another location, which shows that they were probably just trying to aggravate the principal so they could get out of the exams in the first place.

Sniipe

headmaster will be on radio 1 in 2 min

Stark

Sniippe wrote:

1 of them doesn't want a special sitting of the exams... thats just madness! At that age the parent should force him/her to do it.

Hmm, missed this post as I was posting. It puts a different spin on things. Should be interesting to hear what the principal says.

BMH

Still no sign of the principal on the radio.

Do you know their Bebos? It's pretty much the ultimate skanger test.

spurious

The Principal's profile on ratemyteacher.ie is pretty impressive.
The usual cowardly anonymous 1 1 1 but they should be ignored.

BMH

Well, just listened to the interview there. He's standing by his descision.

I would be surprised if this Enda Carrol sold his story to the Star in the morning.

Poor descision, IMO.

Sniipe

BMH wrote:

I would be surprised if this Enda Carrol sold his story to the Star in the morning.

- I wouldn't be surprised. Enda Carroll, he was on the RTE news. In fairness the hair cut isn't that bad. Its a 1 on the back and sides. Army style with a bit of color on top - could be natural. Its a bad straw to pick!!

It's delayed for the online webcast and is on now - http://www.rte.ie/smiltest/radio_new.smil

Crania

I saw this Enda Carroll chap on TV3 News, he loooks like a right little scanger and they showed coverage of him playing soccer in the back garden with what I presume was his brothers and they looked like right scangers aswell.

Although the hair wasn't too bad, like it was just a regular scanger haircut, very short and bleached on the top, many people in my school have hair much worse than that.

I think it was a bit extreme to not allow him do his exams, the principal should've just ignored it for these few weeks of the exams and then just tell him not to come back to the school next year if he feels that strongly about it. Its unfair to the lad to not allow him to sit his exams, I know he probably would've did crap anyway, he still deserves the opportunity to do them.

What I found quite ironic was when TV3 showed the school and interviewed a few of the schools students, you could do see students with really long hair in the background!! That's kinda double-standards!!

abelard

I'm a past pupil of Tullamore College, graduated last year. What was said about those 3 is pretty much true, they are the classic dispruptive student type. However, that principal has spouted on for years about how he values the students and wants to see them succeed, so I can't condone what he did.

I have always thought he has been far too strict on his ideals of an "image" and so I'm not surprised that he put this image above the welfare of these three students. i remember two years ago he threatened to send a girl to Clara as she wore a trousers instead of her school skirt (having said this, in the mean time, trousers for girls have become part of the uniform). This was an issue of comfort for her and I thought, at the time, that disrupting her Leaving cert due to this fixation on uniform image was insane, so i always thought a situation like this would eventually arise.

That principal, I felt (and trust me, I was one of the good students), never had the best interest of the students at heart.

stark wrote:

The school sounds like it could do well to instigate a decent pastoral care programme in my opinion.

Lol, I remember back to first year when we went in one night to view the school before enrolling. We got a half hour talk on the value of the school's pastoral care system. I never saw anything to resemble it throughout my six years there.

Sonofagun_90

CoolCiaran wrote:

I saw this Enda Carroll chap on TV3 News, he loooks like a right little scanger and they showed coverage of him playing soccer in the back garden with what I presume was his brothers.


IIts unfair to the lad to not allow him to sit his exams, I know he probably would've did crap anyway, he still deserves the opportunity to do them.

What I found quite ironic was when TV3 showed the school and interviewed a few of the schools students, you could do see students with really long hair in the background!! That's kinda double-standards!!

1st of all, how dare you judge Enda and presume he will do "crap" in his junior cert.
The 3 of us paid our fees to sit the exam. Neither him nor his family are "scangers" as you put it.

As for the comment asking if we were bullies or disruptive?
I have never bullied anyone... Ok I am disruptive but thats because I refuse to be blamed for things I don't do.

As for that Orlyarl or whatever their name is... Should get their facts correct before they come on here posting crap.

To those looking for bebo page. I don't have bebo.

McEvoy is the bully. He accused my sister, who is in the school next door, of being a druggie. I was handing her 5 euro over the wall to get me credit at the shop as he doesn't let us out. my sister doesn't even smoke. And he has never met her.

In fact her principal had to ring him and demand an apology.

I have been suspeneded for not wearing my tie, having a mobile phone (not using it, he saw it in my pocket.) and the haircuts.
At least my hair is clean, there are lads in there with long greasy hair??? Why not deal with them too?

Sonofagun_90

And how dare that student say that I dont care about my exams, or will fail them. I hope they can back this up.

Enda Carroll isn't as hard up to sell "his story" to the Star newspaper,
Get your facts straight.

Jello

Wooooooooooo.
Well I wasn't expecting this.

Aisling(",)

That is a very weird news story i have ta say.
A substitute teacher in my school once gave out to a girl for shaving her head and made her cry then she found out later the girl had cancer.
My schhol isnt strict on the dress code now because of a new principal but were still not allowed wear trousers
but the old principal would give detention for wearing coloured bobbbins if they werent black grey or white.she gsve my sister detentino for wearing a black and white scrunchie.Ok she was a nun but what the ****!

Red Alert

I'm a college student but i went looking for this story after hearing it on the bus.

I always assumed that like a polling station, the state exams were not in any way controlled by the school principal. the only time a school principal may intervene (according to my own principal) was if the superintendent was late or incapacitated and only after phoning the department for approval. other than that the school has nothing whatsoever to do with the exam.

wrong day to start such nonsense. he should come up and visit UCD - there's every style of haircut doing the rounds there, he'd have a fit.

did the exam superintendent try and reason with him?

FlutterinBantam

Well done to mr Carroll... At last someone with the balls to stand up and be counted....... If these dudes were in breach of school rules.... bin them... it would appear to me that this was a calculated "two fingers", and fair play to the man, he executed.....

education needs more people like this who won't let jackasses(and I'm speaking generally) run the show......

Hope he gets support from other parents and the authorities and the skanger mentality is put firmly where it belongs....out the door.

BMH

Sonofagun_90 wrote:

And how dare that student say that I dont care about my exams, or will fail them. I hope they can back this up.

Enda Carroll isn't as hard up to sell "his story" to the Star newspaper,
Get your facts straight.

I have to call bullsh1t here.
How on Earth would one of the students know that this was being discussed here? Seemingly you've never been on this site due to a new username just there, yet you honed in on a thread all about it. You decided to google Enda's name and defend your position? Unlikely.


But since you claim to be here, you might as well answer some questions such as why you did it, and why you're being accused of being a right scumbag and a school bully by two different people who attended the school?