Table 1: Dissimilarity Index Named Ethnicity Relative to All Other Pupils

Table 1: Dissimilarity Index – named ethnicity relative to all other pupils

Dissimilarity index for this ethnicity relative to all other ethnicities combined

Fractions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

Regressions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

It shows that for all ethnic groups, segregation fell in far more places than it rose. This varies from it falling for 59% of White British students to falling for 75% of Pakistani students. Also for all groups, the changes take the benign form: falls where it was high, any rises where it was low. All in all, segregation is falling in more places than it is rising for all groups and the patterns are benign. The lowest fraction falling is for White British pupils at 59%. The dissimilarity index is technically “composition invariant” which means that it is not affected by simple changes in the underlying population mix. However, if a general increase in non-White British pupils is not evenly spread, as is almost certainly likely to be true, this overall result might largely reflect a broad increase in pupils from other ethnic groups.

Some graphs give more detail. These take a few selected ethnic groups and track the change in the dissimilarity index over 5 years, 2008 to 2013. I ignore Local Authorities with small numbers of the ethnic minorities and follow the places in the top fifth of the distribution for the dissimilarity index in 2008.

Figure 1: Changes in Dissimilarity Index, 2008 – 2013

For the highest fifth of non-small LAs in 2008, for selected ethnic groups. Common scale.

As we would expect from the results in the table, segregation is increasing in some LAs, decreasing in others, and given that this figure relates to the places with higher levels, there are more falls than rises.

Table 2 displays the results for the dissimilarity index for each group relative to just White British students. Again, for all ethnic groups bar one (Indian pupils), segregation fell in more places than it rose. Also again the nature of the changes is benign – falls where high and increases where low.

Table 2: Dissimilarity Index – named ethnicity relative to White British pupils

Dissimilarity index for this ethnicity relative to pupils of White British ethnicity

Fractions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

Regressions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

Finally, in Table 3, we see the fraction of pupils in own-majority schools has declined substantially, for example falling in 84% of LAs for White British pupils and 91% of LAs for Pakistani pupils. There are two LAs in which changes are positively related to prior levels, but this takes place in the context of the huge majority of LAs experiencing a decline.

Table 3: Percentage of pupils in schools where their ethnic group is in majority

Percentage of pupils in the named ethnic group in the LA who are in a school where the majority of pupils are of that ethnic group. For three ethnicities the values are all missing as there are not enough schools in which they are the majority.

Fractions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

Regressions weighted by number of pupils of that ethnicity in each LA

So overall, I am happy to stick with my previous summary: “while there are places and groups where ethnic segregation in schools is increasing, the overall pattern is that it is falling or constant”. And, once again, this is definitely not to say there is no segregation, and it is not to say that the levels we have are unimportant. It is simply to say that, overall, it’s not going up.

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