Ethnic Segregation in England’s Schools

We document ethnic segregation in secondary schools in England in 2001 in order to contribute to the debate on the degree of ethnic group social integration. We use indices of dissimilarity and isolation to compare the patterns of segregation across nine ethnic groups. We find that levels of ethnic segregation in England’s schools are high, with considerable variation both across LEAs and across different minority ethnic groups. By combining the two indices we are able to identify areas of particular concern as scoring highly on both. For pupils of Asian origin, we find that these areas coincide almost exactly with the locations of the severe disorders in the summer of 2001. Finally, we show that ethnic segregation is only weakly related to income segregation.