Race watchdog blames 'white flight' for more segregation in schools

Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, said there was a disturbing trend towards schools being either mainly white or mainly black.

Mr Phillips said the phenomenon of "white flight" from racially mixed areas was behind the problem.

"To put it crudely, white parents, particularly, are unhappy about putting children in schools where they think their children are going to be in a minority.

"And that creates a dynamic of white flight from those schools and, therefore, those residential areas."

The capital has some of the worst problem areas, according to research cited by Mr Phillips.

A survey of one borough showed that 17 schools had more than 90 per cent Bangladeshi pupils, while nine others had fewer than 10 per cent.

Schools are actually more racially segregated than the communities around them, according to Bristol University researchers.

Mr Phillips said: "We think this is a serious problem because it does not help to prepare the children in those schools for the real world, to interact with people who are not like themselves."

He said that, generally speaking, ethnic minority children lost out most from the phenomenon.

Mr Phillips said local education authorities needed to "think harder" about where to draw catchment areas, to discourage the trend and maintain a racial mix.

Schools should look carefully at their admission rules to ensure there was no "hidden bias" that was making the problem worse.

And parents should support out-of-school activities like sport to "expose their children to people who are not like them".

Mr Phillips's warning came as state schools were urged to use ethnic quotas to maintain a racial mix in admissions.

The call came from Lord Bruce-Lockhart, the Tory head of the Local Government Association.

He said it was unacceptable that one school should be 90 per cent white while another down the road was non-white. He said that some experts thought a quota of 25 per cent of places for people of other ethnic groups would be appropriate.

But Mr Phillips said quotas were not "the first place we need to go" while the Muslim Council of Britain branded the plan unworkable.

"You cannot tell a parent that they cannot send their child to the school of their choice because it has met its racial quota," said the council's Tahir Alam.