In the wake of Wednesday’s horrific terrorist attack, the prevailing sentiment is that we defeat such hatred by emphasising our unity. It is a heartening response to such a catastrophe, but how do we realise such cohesion when so many communities are divided along race, class and religious lines?

That people from different backgrounds are leading “parallel lives” has been a recurring concern for successive governments. This may not be the term used by authors of a new report on segregation in schools in England, but it is, nevertheless, what comes to mind as we read their stark findings. More than a quarter of primary schools are ethnically segregated with the figure jumping to a depressing 40% when we look to secondary schools. When it comes to class, the report, carried out by iCoCo Foundation, SchoolDash and The Challenge, finds that nearly a third of all primary schools are segregated along socio-economic lines.

Integration is an obligation that’s primarily expected of others – especially Muslims

Integration, though commonly discussed, is more often than not viewed as an important counter-terrorism strategy, rather than a social benefit in and of itself. Under such thinking, integration is an obligation that’s primarily expected of others – especially Muslims. This does more harm than good, as wider society can avoid hearing how it is implicated in the process. Why bother to think about what role you may play in our persistent difficulties with social segregation when the problem has, rather conveniently, been placed at the foot of a community that happens to live some distance away from you?

Successive governments, ever eager to sooth parental anxieties over schools have offered us increased choice. Having a market in which parents can pick and choose between academies, grammars, comprehensives, faith and free schools fails to consider how this might, necessarily, lead to greater segregation. With Theresa May’s plan to expand grammar schools, we have more choice than ever before, yet between 2011 and 2016 across 150 local authority (LA) areas, more than half of LA primary schools became more ethnically segregated. Where there is the option to choose, there is also the choice that many aren’t prepared to make: an integrated school, less segregation.

Take for example parents who will be faced with the choice of sending their child to a grammar or the local comprehensive. The comp – perceived as middling because it can’t funnel only the highest attaining through its doors – will find that parents with greater means will choose to send their child elsewhere. According to the Sutton Trust those from wealthier backgrounds are “around 10 times more likely to get into a grammar school than a pupil on free school meals”. Less than 3% of grammar school pupils are eligible for free school meals, when the average number of children entitled to them in these selective areas is 18%. Obtaining the finest education for your child becomes as much about getting them into the “best” schools, thus ensuring the poorest won’t be able to access them.

Segregation by class, race or religion cannot be viewed as merely accidental, precisely because these factors form the basis of value judgments around what is considered “good”. Ofsted ratings notwithstanding, who is excluded from that particular school’s community goes a long way to informing whether prospective parents believe it to be good. Parents need to be honest with themselves that racial and class segregation in school persists because their choice is to maintain that divide.

Quarter of English state primary schools are 'ethnically segregated' Read more

Currently the government is seeking to relax measures ensuring new faith schools have a 50% mixed intake. If it really believes in social cohesion, it can and should drop such plans. For their part, schools need to do more to tackle what the report so clearly outlines as an urgent problem. Converter academies (those judged “good” or “outstanding” which have opted to become academies) have the powers to discriminate in favour of children on free school meals. Yet what is widely known is that this hasn’t been the case. They in fact take the lowest amount of disadvantaged pupils relative to the local community. Why then, we may wonder, the continued commitment to make all schools academies by 2020?

Wednesday’s terror attack has been acknowledged as the action of one Muslim – an “Islamist extremist” in May’s words, representative of only himself and not a religion. It is an important response to the very real possibility of a violent backlash against the Muslim community. Yet no one would need to say this attack is not a representative of an entire religion if we were sharing our lives with Muslim neighbours, colleagues and school friends in a more meaningful way.