Why Huddersfield bussed ethnic minorities schoolchildren outside the area

HUDDERSFIELD Corporation was following Government orders to bus children and started the scheme here in 1965.

It began after the Government’s Department for Education advocated that local authorities use bussing to avoid immigrants making up more than one third of a school’s pupils. Eleven other authorities used bussing.

Huddersfield implemented it because in the early 1960s Commonwealth immigration was perceived as a minor crisis by local educators.

Historian Joe Hopkinson said: “Essentially, they feared the formation of ghettos due to large numbers of non-English speakers arriving, generally from the Indian subcontinent, over short periods of time in areas near the centre of town.

“By 1965 half of all pupils at Spring Grove Primary were immigrants.

“It was argued that bussing some of the newcomers to rural, predominantly white, schools was the best way to help them to integrate and learn English.

“However, South Asian children and Black Caribbean children, who were already fluent in English, were also bussed.

“Presumably this was also to help them to integrate. It socially disadvantaged bussed children because they usually lived far away from their class and school mates.

“Bussing actually made integrating and making white friends harder for many immigrant children.”

Bussing ended relatively quickly in Huddersfield compared to areas like Southall in west London, and Bradford, which continued bussing children until the early 1980s.

It was largely phased out in 1973 and entirely stopped by 1975.

Huddersfield replaced it with other methods, such as after-school tutors, summer schools and withdrawal classes where non-Anglophones were mostly educated in normal lessons, but withdrawn once a day for an English class.