New findings about the pioneering Waterhead Academy have added further to the evidence base showing that ethnically mixed schools make a very strong contribution towards promoting better community cohesion. The Academy in Oldham brings together children of white British and South Asian heritage, and was set up in 2010 from the merger of two ethnically different and homogenous schools, following race riots in the town in 2001.
As reported by Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning (Thursday November 5th), new findings show that between the time White British children joined and left the school’s reception year, the proportion of their friends of South Asian heritage tripled from 2.5% to 7.5%. Given that the school educates children over five years, from ages 11 to 16 years, it points to an even larger incremental boost to cross ethnic friendships from attending the mixed school.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, ‘The Waterhead Academy must not be allowed to serve as an isolated gesture towards improving community cohesion. Instead lessons from its pioneering work should be disseminated and acted upon much more widely.
‘Waterhead provides a great example of ethnic and social mixing in schools making a major contribution to breaking down boundaries. It highlights the opportunity of all schools to enable young people to form friendships that cross barriers of race, religion, gender or socio-economic.
‘In our increasingly diverse society, these lessons must not be ignored by government and faith school sponsors. Ethnic mixing should be encouraged as a social good. Activities that make the school system more segregated, such as through instructional Religious Education and by religious selection in pupil admissions, must be consigned to the past.’
Notes
The Today programme’s report can heard from 2 hours 37 mins 50 sec to 2 hours 46 mins 55 sec, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06myp4g.
Evidence base
Academic research has consistently pointed to ethnically mixed schools making a strong contribution towards promoting better cohesion. By way of example, among the key findings of the 2006 paper ‘Social Capital, Diversity and Education Policy’, by Professor Irene Bruegel of the London South Bank University were that:
‘Friendship at primary schools can, and does, cross ethnic and faith divides wherever children have the opportunity to make friends from different backgrounds. At that age, in such schools, children are not highly conscious of racial differences and are largely unaware of the religion of their friends. These findings speak against policies promoting single faith schools, since such policies are likely to lead to reduced ethnic diversity in schools.’ (p2)
In the 2008 Economic and Social Research Council paper ‘Identities in Transition’, Brown, Rutland & Watters found that:
‘… the effects of school diversity were consistent, most evidently, on social relations: higher self-esteem, fewer peer problems and more cross-group friendships. Such findings show that school ethnic composition can significantly affect the promotion of positive intergroup attitudes.’ (p9).
In the 2014 study ’Contextual effect of positive intergroup contact on outgroup prejudice’, Christa and Schmid et al. assessed evidence from ‘across seven large-scale surveys’ finding that:
“Contact does not merely change attitudes on a microscale … Rather, contact also affects prejudice on a macrolevel, whereby people are influenced by the behavior of others in their social context. Prior research that has prioritized the interpersonal nature of contact has ignored its potential widespread impact. Even individuals who have no direct intergroup contact experience can benefit from living in mixed settings … These findings demonstrate the policy potential of contact at the context level, because it can be implemented via macrolevel contexts such as mixed schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces.’ (p3999-4000)
The 2015 study ‘Do Ethnically Mixed Classrooms Promote Inclusive Attitudes Towards Immigrants Everywhere?’ by Germ Janmaat assessed survey data collected from over 100,000 13 and 14 year olds in 38 countries. In conclusion the author agued:
‘On the whole, the results of this study suggest that ethnically mixed schools are well positioned to promote inclusive out-group attitudes among native students … in sum, this study suggests that policy makers should consider ethnic mixing as a strategy to promote more inclusive out-group attitudes’. (p819-820)
