UK Schools "Most Socially Segregated"

A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operations and Development (OECD) claims that schools in the UK are among the most segregated in the developed world.

The report: Education at a Glance 2010 (the latest figures available) warns that disadvantaged children are too often concentrated together in schools.This applies both to the children of poorly educated parents and to those of immigrant families. The OECD's Andreas Schleicher says this is the "biggest challenge" for schools.

The Education at a Glance report from the OECD is the leading publication of international education statistics - comparing the performance of education systems among developed countries.

These latest figures, which are from 2010, reveal the UK has unusually high levels of "segregation" in terms of poorer and migrant families being clustered in the same schools, rather than being spread across different schools.

It looks at where the children of "low-educated" mothers are going to school - which in the UK means the children of mothers who did not achieve five good GCSEs - and found that in the UK they were much more likely to be taught in schools with high numbers of disadvantaged children.

Among the children of immigrant families in the UK, 80% were taught in schools with high concentrations of other immigrant or disadvantaged pupils - the highest proportion in the developed world.

The significance of this, according to Mr Schleicher, is that the social background of a school's intake exerts a strong influence on the likely outcomes for pupils.

The report did however show that the UK was proving a success in harnessing education for social mobility - particularly in getting young people into higher education. The chances of poorer children in the UK getting into university are "relatively high", in comparison with other developed countries. It highlights the progress between generations - with 41% of 25 to 34-year-olds in the UK achieving a higher level of education than their parents - above the OECD average.

The international statistics showed that in some countries social mobility could also go in reverse. In the US, almost one in five young adults faced "downward mobility" - such as not going to university when their parents had.