← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · kminta
Thread ID: 12992 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2004-04-02
2004-04-02 22:40 | User Profile
[I]British schools are highly segregated, much to the dismay of the left-wing Guardian.[/I]
[B]Tensions that start in playground[/B]
[I]Segregation Failure of races to mix at school highlighted[/I]
[B]Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent[/B] [B]Thursday April 1, 2004[/B] [B][URL=http://www.guardian.co.uk/]The Guardian [/URL][/B]
White flight and the rise of Muslim schools are turning England's inner-city playgrounds into monocultural zones, potential breeding grounds for intolerance and racism, researchers warn today.
Segregation is particularly high among south Asian pupils, 70% of whom would need to move school in some local education authorities to reflect the actual racial mix of the area.
The warnings of Sir Herman Ouseley's report into the Bradford riots of 2001 about the dangers of separate education for different ethnic groups have failed to prevent high levels of segregation in many English secondary schools, according to researchers at Bristol University.
"The peer groups children play with, talk to and work with are important factors moulding their perspectives on society," said Simon Burgess, professor of economics.
The Ouseley report followed a summer of race riots in Bradford and found that segregation in schools played a key part in the city's retreat behind ethnic lines.
Sir Herman, the former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, concluded that the ignorance of other groups arising from self-segregation had to be ended.
Previous research from the Bristol team has shown that areas of particularly high segregation for south Asian pupils coincided almost exactly with the locations of the worst disorder in the 2001 riots.
"Either school segregation plays a direct role in the underlying causes of discontent or is related through a correlation with housing segregation," said Prof Burgess.
But the message about the importance of learning tolerance in the playground has failed to take root.
Instead, with middle-class white parents queuing up to send their children to church schools or private education, and Muslim parents wanting their own faith schools, English schools are highly segregated.
In the average English local education authority 50% of children would have to move school in order to achieve an even spread of races across schools.
In most cases the schools are simply reflecting the ethnic makeup of highly segregated neighbourhoods, according to Prof Burgess. But in the inner cities, where parents have a choice of local schools, playgrounds are more segregated than neighbourhoods, suggesting that families are choosing to educate their children with others of the same race.
This is particularly true in London, the researchers say. "Students in London are gen erally more segregated at school than in their neighbourhood."
The choices of white parents were likely to be the driving factor behind school segregation, Prof Burgess said, because white students make up 87% of school rolls.
South Asian pupils experience a higher level of segregation than other groups, with Bangladeshi children the most highly segregated. In around 10% of local education authorities 70% of Bangladeshi pupils would need to move school to reflect the overall racial makeup of the authority. Local education authorities with a higher proportion of black students had lower levels of segregation for them, the research shows, perhaps reflecting the longer history of African-Caribbean immigration.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the CRE, said that while mixed schools were desirable, it was understandable that some parents wanted to find a school where their children would not be in a minority.
"Imagine you are a Bangladeshi parent in the East End: which are you going to choose?" he said. "A school where your child is in a small minority or one where they are part of a big group? It's partly anxiety about their children's safety."
It was simplistic to suggest that sending children to school with other children like themselves led to racial tensions, he said.
"Nobody has yet demonstrated that a concentration of ethnic minorities in one school or other leads to intolerance."