Warning of schools becoming 'ghettoes'

Britain's schools are turning into "ethnic and religious ghettoes" creating a "ticking time bomb" of racial and cultural tensions waiting to explode, the Commission for Racial Equality warned yesterday.

The CRE said seeds of the UK becoming a "mini-America" with racially determined ghettoes in all of Britain's towns and cities were being sown in schools that were segregated, instead of being places where children learn about racial and cultural tolerance.

The comments from the CRE come as research claimed that where local communities are segregated along ethnic lines the same pattern of segregation is reflected in the local school population.

Studies supported by Race Equality Sandwell (RES) found that schools became divided along ethnic minority lines because local authorities were responsible for "social engineering" and were influenced by ethnic origin when allocating social housing.

The creation of restrictive school catchment areas then made it inevitable that the local school reflected the ethnic make up of the local population, explained Derrick Campbell, chief executive of RES.

When it came to selecting secondary schools for their children, ethnic minority parents were attracted to schools that reflected their ethnic background because they believed there was "safety in numbers" and parents were following the "herd instinct", he said.

Mr Campbell said there was a need for a fairer system of school selection if ethnic minority parents were to have a real choice for their children.

He said: "We need to have a system in place which allows parental choice and ensures that we have a balanced representation in every school along ethnic lines which still allows parents to choose the school which meets the academic needs of their child."

The Runnymede Trust, an independent policy research organisation which focuses on multi-ethnic issues, is due to publish the results of its own study into school parental choice and ethnic segregation in May.

Researchers have been looking at the parental choice of secondary school made by parents at six primary schools in three local education authorities in England. Parental focus groups were also held.

Researcher Debbie Weekes-Barnard said that like RES, they also discovered that where populations were segregated along black minority ethnic (BME) lines the same ethnic mix existed in the local schools. This was more likely to be seen in primary schools than secondary schools, she said.

But the Runnymede study concluded that when parents were choosing the secondary school for their child, the reasons were diverse and not necessarily because the parents were following the herd.

She said: "Some parents chose the secondary school for their child not because they were self-segregating but because of what other families said about the school - there was an informal rating system.

"We also found that there was another group of BME parents who were aspirational and were prepared to take a risk and move their child to a school which was not ethnically segregated in order that their child could get the education they believed they deserved - even if it meant that they were culturally isolated."

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