Demos study finds parents like to send children to schools where their ethnicity is dominant, but this hampers educational attainment

The education of white pupils is being hampered by increased school segregation on racial grounds, according to analysis by an influential thinktank.

A study by Demos pointed out that many schools outside Britain’s big cities are becoming more segregated than the communities they serve.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Demos’s mapping integration project and former head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), warned this is dividing society and holding back white children who tend to do better when taught in racially mixed schools.

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He pointed out the dramatic improvement in Birmingham and London’s educational performances in the past 10 years was in large part due to “high-performing ethnic minorities”.

Launching the report on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Phillips said: “To some extent, in London the clever thing for smart middle-class parents to do is to look for schools which have substantial numbers of Indian heritage children, because the statistics say that their child will benefit from sitting in the same class as those motivated kids.”

He claimed that greater racial integration in schools would improve community cohesion and increase the educational attainment of ethnic groups, such as white children, who are currently falling behind.

Demos found parents tend to send their children to schools where their ethnicity is dominant. Philips said it was understandable parents wanted their children to feel comfortable but they would do better by opting for integrated schools.

Phillips said: “What’s important here is that parents have more information about these issues, they think a bit more carefully about the choices they are making because if we do that we can both do something about the social separation – which I think everyone would accept isn’t such a great thing – but we can also help some of those who are lagging behind.

“White children are the ones who are doing least well. Those white children who are in schools where there are a lot of high-performing minorities tend to do better. There is something about sitting in class with those kids that improves performance ... We are trying to prepare children for a diverse world – schools should reflect that.”

The Sunday Times, which was handed a preview of the research, pointed out that schools in some parts of England are more racially divided (£) than St Louis in the US – a hotbed of racial tension in the wake of police killing last year of Michael Brown, a black teenager.