Literacy news
Headteacher expresses fears about racial segregation in London schools
6 Oct 2011
Concerns have been raised regarding racial segregation in inner-city schools, as the headteacher of one of London’s leading fee-paying schools has claimed that the capital is “sleepwalking” towards apartheid.
Speaking at the Headmasters’ and Headmisstress’ Conference (HMC), Mr Levin, of the City of London school for boys, expressed his concerns that London is “divided into ghettos.”
The example cited was that of Stepney Green Maths and Computing and Science College, in Tower Hamlets, east London. 97% of pupils at the boys’ school are from a Bangladeshi background. Mr Levin warned that the capital was "sleepwalking" towards apartheid, because increasing incidents of monoculture in schools meant that students from different backgrounds were not mixing.
It means that they are not mixing with other people from different faiths, different races and different socio-economic backgrounds.
You may not like someone, but if you know them you do not fear them, and I think schools should be an area in which in a rational protected way, children from a different background, faith, racial grouping should come together in a common purpose of education and get to know each other.
Mr Levin’s choice of language has been criticised by Tower Hamlets Borough council. A spokesman commented that,
It would be alarmist to suggest that there is 'apartheid' in east London just because children and young people are receiving their education among other pupils of the same ethnicity.
Read the full story on The Guardian.
