Source: The Conversation – UK
If you want to see how private schools in the UK can reinforce segregation between children of different social classes, the London Borough of Southwark provides a good example.
It has three large private secondary schools, less than in other wealthier London boroughs. When we took a close look at these schools, we found that 75% of the students are from the top two social classes: from families with higher professional and managerial backgrounds.
By contrast, in two of the 13 state schools in the borough, 50% of students are from these upper and middle classes, while the other 11 state schools have between 18-33% of students from these groups. Southwark’s upper and middle-class students are intensely concentrated in the borough’s private schools.
There’s a measure called the “index of dissimilarity” which can be used to work out how to achieve an even distribution of social classes across schools in Southwark. If you include private schools, 31% of students in the top two social classes and 28% of students in the lowest social classes would have to move school. But take private schools out of the equation, and just 2% of students in the most affluent groups and 6% of students in the poorest groups would need to move.
In other words, Southwark has very low class segregation between its state schools. But this hides the fact that the upper middle and middle classes are overwhelmingly concentrated in private schools.
This matters, because who we go to school with fundamentally shapes our experience of education and our outlook on life.
These inequalities in intakes between private and state schools have been invisible until now.
When students from deprived backgrounds are unevenly distributed between schools, attainment gaps – the difference in academic achievement between richer and poorer students – tend to be larger. The segregation of our schools by social class makes educational inequality worse. Less segregated, more socially mixed schools would improve achievement for all – and especially for lower-attaining students.
Grammar schools, which ostensibly select students by academic ability, are disproportionately middle class. Research has found that once their privileged intake is accounted for, grammar schools are “no better or worse than the other schools in England”
Class segregation between schools is quite simply unfair. This is why there was support for the abolition of selective schooling in the 1960s, when comprehensive schools were introduced in all but a few parts of England. Phasing out grammar schools was popular because the class inequalities in opportunity and attainment they caused was obvious.
But this reform did not include private schools, a key driver of educational inequality.
Concentrating advantage
More than any other school type, private schools concentrate wealth and advantage. Private schools educate barely any working-class students. In my research with colleagues, less than 3% of students in UK private schools were from the lowest social classes, compared to 16.7% in state schools and colleges.
We know that private schools are disproportionately attended by the highest earners and the upper middle classes. Yet we know almost nothing about how private schools affect the sorting and segregation of social classes between schools.
In our paper, we looked at the extent to which the social class composition of schools in local authority areas differs from the country as a whole. This allowed us to measure whether some areas had schools which were more segregated than others. Greater segregation meant that schools had more uneven distribution of working or middle class students relative to the national distribution.
Divisions in cities
Our research shows that the effect of private schools on increasing school segregation across Britain is substantial, but the effects are stronger in cities.
London stood out. Even after removing private schools, it remained the most socially segregated region in England and more segregated than Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland too. Earlier research also suggests that social class divisions over access to sought-after state schools were particularly acute in the capital.
For post-16 education, London’s state schools and colleges are very unequal. In affluent western boroughs such as Richmond upon Thames or Kingston, working-class students are heavily concentrated in further education colleges, with a larger number of more middle-class state schools.
In more working-class areas such as Enfield, middle-class students are concentrated in grammar schools, driving segregation up. Local context is key to understanding the specific drivers of class segregation in post-16 education in the capital. Whatever the circumstances, the capital’s state schools and colleges are highly unequal.
Outside London, private schools were drivers of class segregation in schools in other urban areas. Provincial cities and towns such as Wakefield or Hull in Yorkshire, Southampton in the south, Stockport in north-west England and Clackmannanshire in Scotland also saw very large falls in segregation when we excluded private schools from our analysis.
In these areas the state schools and colleges have a more even distribution of social classes between schools and colleges; these private schools are particularly out of joint with their locality.
In the aftermath of the second world war, early supporters of comprehensive schools highlighted the democratic potential of schools to create a “common culture”. Rather than the deep class divisions the grammar school system created between academic and vocational education, councillors and teachers argued that comprehensives would be “the best education for democracy” and would create “a system which did not strengthen and deepen such distinctions”.
In the socially and politically divided times we live in, creating a democratic, common culture without class inequality ought to be on the agenda.
The social class inequalities between schools and colleges that we reveal in our study will not go away by doing nothing. A fully comprehensive system of education would be a democratic move towards a less segregated, more equal society for all.
Sol Gamsu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/05/how-private-schools-segregate-students-by-class-and-strengthen-social-divisions/