In the gentrifying inner-Melbourne suburb of Flemington, where the median house price is $800,000 and the median wage is well above the national figure, there is a primary school where the children are among the poorest in the country.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 22 seconds 4 m 22 s Listen to Jessica Longbottom's report Download 8 MB

Nestled under the suburb's towering public housing estate, Debney Meadows Primary School has just 90 students.

Almost all of them are children of recent migrants and refugees.

"Either because of history or perceptions, often children [who live elsewhere in Flemington] have walked past this school and found themselves accepted by surrounding public schools," said Vicki Watson, Principal of Debney Meadows Primary School.

The middle class in the area favour Flemington Primary School up the road.

It has 475 students and 40 per cent of them are from the most advantaged quarter of the Australian community.

Experts call this phenomena 'white flight' and say it is mirrored around the country in areas where public housing meets affluent areas, such as the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton and inner-Sydney suburbs of Redfern and Glebe.

It greatly concerns education expert Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne Richard Teese.

"There's a really distinct risk we will create ghettoes and it flies in the face of our historical mission of public schooling, which is an all-in institution in which we learn from each other and support each other," he said.

Debney Meadows Primary School, nestled beneath Flemington's towering public housing estate. ( Jessica Longbottom )

Mission to attract 'aspirationals'

Ms Watson has only been in the job 12 months but she is on a mission to encourage parents in the wider Flemington community to send their children to Debney Meadows.

"I understand the aspirational demograph that sits on the other side of this very street, as I understand the demograph that sits at the back of our school (in public housing)."

Using the latest research, she has introduced a raft of changes.

The school has had a wall-to-wall paint job and new uniforms will be introduced next year.

Students now have their own computers and are engaged in inquiry learning, while literacy levels have improved.

"Now if that's not attractive to an aspirational family, I don't know what is," she said.

"But on top of that, our students are learning Chinese mandarin and they now know seven songs ... and they can also count to 100."

She is also working to make the children and parents at Debney Meadows feel they belong to the Australian community as a whole.

"We're in a school where we largely work with young refugee children who've come from the Horn of Africa," she said.

"When I came here, they didn't sing the national anthem, they had no flag pole, they had no flag.

"So I was very conscious of the broader political context and my role in that.

"If it's not to make the children share a bit of an identity and to help them to connect with the broader multicultural context, then what is my job?"

When asked whether she thinks the fact only a handful of Anglo-Australian students attend the school impacts on her students' sense of belonging to the broader community, she is resolute.

"Absolutely. And I think we are moribund if we do not consciously address that."

Debney Meadows Primary School Principal Vicki Watson is trying to make the school attractive to aspirational families. ( Jess Longbottom )

"Dangerous" risk of creating ghettos

Professor Teese said "mobile and highly aspiring" parents are walking past their local state primary school out of fear their child will not get the stimulation and support they need.

"That's not necessarily based on any valid or reliable information about what the school offers, but more a kind of 'herd instinct' that says it can't be right if it's local or especially if it's serving a housing commission area," he said.

He believes the broader social implications of having segregated schools are huge, and can have an impact well after students graduate.

"One of them is the children who walk past and are not entering the school don't have the challenge and stimulation of diversity and in Australian society that's really important: we do not want to educate our children apart.

"The children who do use the school, say from a housing estate, are also educated apart so they don't enjoy the stimulation or the support of their peers who are more advantaged in the level of training they've received in the home, in language development, in aspirations.

"So both parties lose. And it's really unfortunate."

He said some Australian schools are experiencing partial "ghettoisation", where disadvantaged students are educated apart and have no access to more advantaged peers.

"The creation of ghettoes is very dangerous," he said.

"It lowers expectations on people, creates a breeding ground of intolerance based on ignorance ... and it's really disastrous and quite paradoxical to have public schooling exposed to a partial ghettoisation, which we're experiencing here and there."

Students at Debney Meadows Primary School have their own computers and are engaged in inquiry learning. ( Jessica Longbottom )

'White flight' phenomena a form of 'segregation'

Christina Ho, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, said schools in areas that were traditionally working class but are becoming more fashionable can be abandoned by the middle class.

"You get this phenomena of 'white flight', which I know is a very inflammatory term, but when you have schools which are seen as 'too full' of kids from migrant backgrounds or refugee backgrounds ... that causes a lot of Anglo-Australian families to become a bit worried about it.

"It's right to call it segregation because we basically see people avoiding their neighbours," she said.

She said the driver is not racism per se, but parents' concerns over learning outcomes and the social environment their children will be in.

"I don't think people are deliberately trying to do it but ... everyone is just doing what they think is best for their child, but the social outcome is you have schools that don't really reflect the local neighbourhood," she said.

"I think it's a real lost opportunity for cross-cultural education and cross-cultural understanding, but it also raises questions about equity as well, especially if you have concentrations of disadvantage that overlap with ethnicity."