El Salvador enforcing strict student dress codes to bring discipline back to schools

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Principals this week in El Salvador began greeting students individually at school gates, not only to wish them “buenos días,” but also to inspect their haircuts and school uniforms.

President Nayib Bukele has expanded his efforts to remake his country to students’ appearance as part of bringing discipline back to schools, once a recruiting ground for the country’s powerful gangs.

His newly appointed education minister, Karla Trigueros, is an Army captain and physician who visits the country’s schools wearing fatigues.

She sent a memo Monday to all school principals saying not only would they be held to a high standard as role models for students, but they must stand at the gate looking for clean and neat uniforms, “appropriate” haircuts and formal greetings from students.

Failure to follow the directives would be considered a “serious lack of administrative responsibility,” Trigueros said in the memo.

The rules already existed, but weren’t enforced.

The order generated lines in barbershops across the country as boys sat for neat, high and tight haircuts and many students posted videos of themselves being shorn.

Bukele is a millennial leader who leaned toward baseball caps and jeans during his first term but has taken on more formality in his second. He shared the memo on X, writing, “to build the El Salvador we dream of, it’s clear we must completely transform our educational system.”

Anecdotally, parents seemed to support the latest move by the highly popular president too.

“I feel like it’s good, that’s how you straighten them out from a young age,” mother María Barrera said Thursday as she watched her son enter the Concha Viuda de Escalon school.

“I didn’t know, but my son came clean, though a little hairy,” said María Segovia, who takes her son to school on her way to work. “I took him to the barber today. We’re going to comply because it’s good.”

Parent Ramon Valladares alluded to the powerful gangs that ruled neighbourhoods and recruited school kids for years before Bukele’s crackdown that has imprisoned more than 88,000 people suspected of gang ties. In those days, teachers feared imposing discipline on students who might have gang connections.

“Now that the government is putting things in order, maybe people might not like it, right?” Valladares said. “But there are some families like ours who are open-minded about any situation. So for me, it’s great.”

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