FIVE young school girls have petitioned the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of the refusal by a school to admit them on grounds of their "unshaven" heads.

The five, all Grade Seven pupils, had successfully applied for Form One places at the Hermann Gmeiner High School but were denied places after refusing on religious grounds to cut their hairs "to acceptable school standards".

The girls are members of an obscure religious group, the End Time Messages Church, which bars its female members from shaving or cutting their hairs.

In their suit, the girls said the school's hairstyle requirements were unconstitutional and infringed both on their religious and human rights.

They contended in the petition that Hermann Gmeiner High School, a privately-owned school in the northern town of Bindura, was in breach of the Constitution of Zimbabwe through its hairstyle requirements and should be compelled to admit them .

'The school's rules are discriminatory and the refusal to admit the girls into the school was not under the authority of any law,' the girls' attorney argued in the petition.

The girls also quoted some verses in the Bible, including 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 6, to back their court application against the school.

Apart from the school authorities, the Attorney General and Minister of Education were also cited as respondents in the case.

This is not the first time school authorities in Zimbabwe have had to contend with court cases involving hairstyles.

In 2007, the Supreme Court compelled a school in the capital, Harare, to admit a neight-year-old boy it had turned away over dreadlocks.

A few years ago, two dreadlocked lawyers petitioned the courts after being barred from practicing and taking up seats in Parliament.