Labour conference: Parents' schools choice can lead to community division

29 September 2009 1 min read Ross Watson Education

The government's drive to give parents more choice over which schools to send their children to is creating divisions within communities, sometimes along racial lines, a Labour minister has said.

Shahid Malik, cohesion minister in the Department of Communities and Local Government, made the acknowledgement in response to a speech by Hetan Shah, chief executive of education charity DEA.

"I have personal experience of this issue," said Malik, speaking at the Labour fringe event Learning Difference: Can Schools Teach Community Cohesion? "The school that I attended as a child was around five per cent black, minority and ethnic, which was a fair reflection of the local community at the time. But some years later I discovered it had become 100 per cent black and minority ethnic, which was not a fair reflection of the local community."

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