Middle class parents ‘drive social split in school system’

BRITAIN’S schools are becoming increasingly segregated along class lines as middle-class parents shun poorer pupils to protect their children from social problems, it was claimed yesterday.

Coalition policies are sharpening the divide between ‘schools for the middle-class’ and those for working-class youngsters, a teachers’ leader said.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, claimed the Government’s ‘dirty little secret’ was a raft of spending cuts that would push the most disadvantaged children further into poverty.

‘The poorer children get, the more stratified education becomes, because middle-class parents want to keep their children away from the social problems which are brought in by poor children,’ she said.

‘We have, in the UK, schools whose intakes are stratified along class lines. We have schools for the elite, schools for the middleclass and schools for the working-class.’

Giving a keynote speech to ATL’S annual conference, Dr Bousted said schools should become more socially mixed. ‘The effect of unbalanced school intakes is toxic for the poorest and most dispossessed,’ she added.

Dr Bousted said that going to school with middle-class pupils helped boost the achievement of poorer youngsters.