By Carlena Knight
A new branding policy for school uniforms will be implemented for the new school year.
This is according to Sports and Education Minister, Daryll Matthew.
“Now coming out of this, I think it opens up a debate about how involved branding and politics and personal aspirations ought not to be in the lives of our school children, and so I am going to make it public here now, that from the upcoming academic year in September, the Ministry of Education and Sports will seek to ensure that all schools have the requisite uniforms, or are properly attired for the inter-school’s competition in whatever discipline, and I believe an initiative like that will put the entire issue to rest, and to remove the unnecessary politics and political rhetoric that is going to be coming forth over the next few months out of the conversation.
“Our young people really do not deserve to be caught up in that sort of morass, and we will just be putting that issue to rest once and for all,” Matthew said.
He did not go into details on how that new policy would be structured.
Discussions of inappropriate branding on school uniforms were thrust into the spotlight for the past few days following the revelation of a picture on social media that showed students from the Golden Grove Primary School adorned in football uniforms with [Minister of Sports] Matthew’s name on the front.
That image prompted a heated debate, with some having no issue as “businesses do the same thing,” while others were adamant that students should not be used as ‘political pawns.’
Matthew agreed with the latter, and it was for that reason and more that he presented the school with a brand-new set of uniforms.
Regarding the issue [of sponsors having their names on uniforms, and children being manipulated], Matthew said that [the new uniform policy of no corporate names] makes it “done and dusted.”