This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: If you want to see how private schools in the U.K. can reinforce segregation between children of different social classes, the London Borough of Southwark provides a good example. It has three large private secondary schools, fewer than in other wealthier London boroughs.
When we took a close look at these schools, we found that 75% of the students are from the top two social classes: from families with higher professional and managerial backgrounds. By contrast, in two of the 13 public schools in the borough, 50% of students are from these upper and middle classes, while the other 11 public schools have between 18% and 33% of students from these groups. Southwark's upper- and middle-class students are intensely concentrated in the borough's private schools.
There's a measure called the "index of dissimilarity" which can be used to work out how to achieve an even distribution of social classes across schools in Southwark. If you include private schools, 31% of students in the top two social classes and 28% of students in the lowest social classes would have to change schools. But take private schools out of the equation, and just 2% of students in the most affluent groups and 6% of students in the poorest groups would need to move.
In other words, Southwark has very low class segregation between its public schools. But this hides the fact that the upper middle and middle classes are overwhelmingly concentrated in private schools. This matters because who we go to school with fundamentally shapes our experience of education and our outlook on life.
These inequalities in intakes between private and public schools have been invisible until now. When students from deprived backgrounds are unevenly distributed between schools, attainment gaps—the difference in academic achievement between richer and poorer students—tend to be larger. The segregation of our schools by social class makes educational inequality worse.
Less segregated, more socially mixed schools would improve achievement for all—and especially for lower-attaining students. Grammar schools, which ostensibly select students by academic ability, are disproportionately middle class. Research has found that once their privileged intake is accounted for, grammar schools are "no better or worse than the other schools in England." Class segregation between schools is quite simply unfair.
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