Summary

Data about the school-age population in LEAs provide contextual information about what is happening in terms of patterns of ethnic segregation at a broad geographic scale. In regard to the number of each ethnic group per local authority, the White British now have greater potential to be ‘exposed’ to other groups than they did in the past (to reside and be schooled alongside them) because the numbers of those other groups have grown. The reverse is not true, however, because the potential exposure of ‘minority’ groups to the White British has declined with their reduced number or lower growth rate compared to most other groups. All but ten authorities have a more diverse school-age population overall.

Introduction

Chapter 2 looked at the changing numbers of various ethnic groups in the state schools of English LEAs over the period from 2010 to 2017. It found a decreasing percentage of the pupils to be White British, with that decline due to a smaller number of that group in secondary schools (but not primary schools, where their number is rising), and also due to the rising number of pupils from other ethnic groups (with the exception of Black Caribbeans, whose numbers have declined in both primary and secondary schools).

The picture sketched was one of increasing diversity across large parts of the country at the LEA scale, with the school-age population less dominated by the White British, though it remains by far the largest group. Although a decline in the White British is notable in some conurbations, there are many other places where not only are the White British increasing in number, so too are other ethnic groups. In this chapter, we turn to the sorts of formal measures of segregation widely used in academic writing and in policy research. Doing so allows us to both to colour the picture more fully and to introduce the measures ahead of more geographically nuanced analysis from Chapter 4 onwards.

Measuring segregation

Segregation means that when we map where members of different ethnic groups are living or schooled, those maps are not all the same and each shows geographical variation. Put simply, ‘different’ people live in different places.