City schools among most segregated in UK – report
BIRMINGHAM has some of the most segregated schools in the country, with pupils overwhelmingly from just one ethnic group despite the huge diversity of the city’s population, a new report has suggested.
The report warns this can encourage fear and prejudice – and hurt pupils’ chances of getting a job once they leave.
It is one of a number of findings made by Dame Louise Casey, who was commissioned by the Government to investigate social integration in Great Britain.
Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Perry Barr, said the report highlighted the need to take action to encourage people to mix.
Housing policy had allowed people to live in different areas based on their race or ethnicity, he warned.
Across the country, more than half of ethnic minority students are in schools where most pupils come from an ethnic minority.
This is partly because some areas have populations that are overwhelmingly from ethnic minority communities. The report highlighted Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green in Birmingham as examples.
But it is also because parents tend to send their children to schools where they will not be a minority. The report said that “segregation between White British pupils and all other ethnic groups” was highest in Blackburn, followed by Birmingham. “We were particularly struck by the results of a survey of pupils in a nonfaith secondary school with a high Asian population which we were told about on a review states.
Pupils had been asked to identify the percentage Asian population of Britain and their estimates ranged from 50 per cent to 90 per cent (the actual figure is seven per cent), presumably reflecting their experience in the local community, and a relative lack of knowledge about the country as a whole.
“Contact with young people from different backgrounds promotes better understanding and more positive views, leading to less anxiety, fear, prejudice and discrimination between people from different backgrounds. Inter-ethnic contact and networks can also improve employment outcomes.”
A Government visit,” the inquiry report into the Trojan Horse affair found there had been “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham,” Louise Casey’s report said.
“The ‘Trojan Horse’ episode highlighted weaknesses in how leaders in education – whether in the council or as head teachers – deal with robust requests from a minority of parents claiming to represent the community. While such ‘requests’ are made on the basis of accommodating religious and cultural needs of Muslim children, they are often about sustaining the power of self-appointed community leaders intent on perpetuating inequality and regressive attitudes.”
Dame Carey’s report