Read the policy the way she had to live under it: afro hair had to be of “reasonable size and length.” Ruby Williams, a young teenager at The Urswick School in Hackney, east London, was sent home again and again for the size of the hair growing out of her own head. She fought the policy for about three years — and she won.
Being sent home sounds small until you count what it costs. Every trip home is a day of lessons gone, a walk of explanation in front of classmates, and a message delivered to a child about her own body: you, as you are, are too much for this building. The rule never had to say the word “afro” with punishment attached — it just had to define “reasonable” in a way her hair could never be.
She didn’t fight alone — and she didn’t fight for a term
Ruby Williams’s case was backed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Britain’s equality watchdog. That backing matters, because a schoolgirl against a school’s lawyers and rulebook is not a fair fight, and everybody involved knew it.
And she kept going for about three years. Not a viral week. Not a single meeting. Three years of a young person’s life, carrying a case about her own hair while she was supposed to be carrying schoolbooks.
In February 2020, the fight ended: an £8,500 out-of-court settlement — and the school dropped the policy. The school did not accept liability, and this page prints that honestly, because the outcome doesn’t need dressing up: the policy that sent her home no longer exists, and her stand is the reason.
The sequel reached every school in the country
Her case didn’t end with her school. In October 2022, the EHRC issued national school guidance on hair discrimination — the direct sequel to cases like Ruby’s, putting every school in the country on notice about what hair rules may and may not do.
That is the arc a page like ours exists to document. One girl refuses to accept that her afro is “too big.” Three years later her school’s policy is gone. Two years after that, the guidance her case helped bring about is national. The next girl whose hair gets questioned in a corridor is standing behind a line Ruby Williams helped draw — and she may never know her name. Now you do.
Join the conversation
Should a school EVER get to rule on the “size” of a child’s afro — and if your daughter kept getting sent home for her hair, would you have fought it for three years the way Ruby did? Tell us below.
Source note: Ruby Williams’s case — a pupil at The Urswick School in Hackney, east London, repeatedly sent home under a uniform policy requiring afro hair to be of “reasonable size and length”; her fight of about three years backed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission; and the February 2020 outcome, an £8,500 out-of-court settlement with the school dropping the policy while not accepting liability — is from BBC reporting on the settlement (February 2020) and EHRC statements. The EHRC’s national school guidance on hair discrimination followed on October 27, 2022. Note: sources split on her age when she was first sent home (14 vs 15; she was 18 at settlement), so this article describes her as a young teenager rather than printing a precise starting age.
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