Call for ethnic quotas in schools

Lord Bruce-Lockhart, Chairman of the Local Government Association and former leader of Kent's Conservative Council, has raised eyebrows by saying state schools in ethnically diverse areas should admit a proportion of pupils according to their ethnicity. His reasoning was that:

"Children start off being colour-blind and this is a wonderful thing. But if you have schools where the children are being educated in different ethnic groups you are going to lose that and you are simply not going to have integration."

He also mooted the idea of twinning white and non-white schools, and of having them under the same management. The Muslim Council of Britain's education spokesman took a libertarian stance on the issue:

“You cannot tell a parent that they cannot send their child to the school of their choice because it has met its racial quota. The right of parents to send their children to the school they want is a fundamental right in this country.”

In practice, disallowing pupils from going to their preferred school because of the colour of their skin would be very controversial, but hopefully Bruce-Lockhart has helped kick-start a frank debate on social cohesion.

Deputy Editor

Comments

[Anthony Broderick]

The problem he's trying to solve is that of ethnic-minorities being sub-conciously classed as seperate entities to the indigenous kids because of the make-up of their schools.

Treating them even more differently by singling them out for quotas etc only serves to exacerbate this.

The best thing about Inigo Wilson's Lefty Lexicon (http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/inigo_wilson/index.html) was his definitions about judging people by their race rather than by who they are as people - basically, positive discrimination is counter-productive.

[Mark Wadsworth]

Yup, positive discrimination is on the whole counter productive.

More to the point, according to Blundell's Law, any attempt by the government to achieve anything in the way of influencing behaviour, social engineering, tax breaks, subsidies, quotas, whatever, backfires in spades. It always makes things worse. If in doubt, do nothing. Small government!

[Chad]

If you believe that we are individuals, then you would naturally reject any attempt by the state or political parties to treat us a simply part of a larger group whose composition can be altered based on our characteristics at their will.

Fixed quotas are a socialist idea that treats us as small part of a larger collective, not as individuals we are.

If our kids were guaranteed a place at, and obliged to attend their local school like in France (unless they go private) then clearly the composition of the school would match the composition of the surrounding community.

[James Maskell]

I usually agree with Bruce-Lockhart. Hes a sensible guy. But on this one I have to disagree. For one it gets in the way of the independence of schools if we are imposing quotas. Its like saying we want schools to be as independent as possible but then telling them they cant be grammar schools... It also interferes with parents free choice of schools, if white parents cannot send their children to their preferred school because the racial quota stops that from happening. It should be a level platform with no advantage given to anyone.

Also, as others have noted already, positive discrimination isnt justified in any case. The same would go for children in care which cross racial boundaries. Give support to them outside of school through extra curricular work but in terms of admissions it must be fair.

[RodS]

Total madness as an idea and only on the Radar because of the growing Muslim pressure. The social and cultural norms that have allowed Britain to 'absorb' are being challenged in a way they never have before. We should face down this challenge.

[SimonNewman]

"Children start off being colour-blind and this is a wonderful thing. But if you have schools where the children are being educated in different ethnic groups you are going to lose that and you are simply not going to have integration"

The American experience seems to be the opposite, that race-based "busing" of pupils fosters a sense of racial/ethnic group identity and alienation from other groups. Forcing people together via group-based quotas seems to exaggerate rather than reduce inter-group tensions. People seem to get along best when they have something in common, eg they work at the same job (and were both selected on merit, without racial/ethnic discrimination), and when they are together voluntarily. This tends to emphasise commonalities rather than differences.

[Simon Mallett]

Selection by ethnic origin is not the way forward.

[Adam]

The problem with this proposal is that parents want to send their children to schools as close to their homes as possible. A school's cathcment area is the local community. If this is all white or ethnic then short of bussing pupils in this proposal wouldn't work.

And why would parents want their childern sent to a school away from their home to to satisfy some ethnic quota system?

Twinning schools and having exchange programmes is an idea already being tried in some local authorities and something worth exploring further.

[Serf]

This goes against the idea of making schools indepedent and answerable to parents.

[Andrew Young]

Actually he may have a point.

Seperation in education (and consequently in ordinary life), as I know from Northern Ireland, leads to inevitable conflict.

Whilst I don't think we should consider quotas or bussing children into white/black areas, there should be scope for pupils from different areas to meet and interact.

I was initially shocked by how seperate the layers of education are here in London. Having those seperate layers living in close proximity is a recipe for disaster.

Anyone working in education know of any existing schemes in GB that match the 'cross community' programmes in NI?

[sjm]

Seriously bad idea. Can you imagine the arguments about children of mixed race or mixed faith families? Let's acknowledge that 'voluntary' ghettoes exist, change their nature over time, and as long as the host culture stays strong and attractive, second or third generation immigrants become part of the majority. I speak from personal experience.

We are dealing with over 30 yrs of leftie multi-culturism, and the only way of eliminating hatred and misunderstanding is for individuals to get to know each other and work together. But NOT via state-sponsored or legislated social engineering.

[Mark Fulford]

In education we should be working to increase parental choice. Quotas will have unintended consequences and restrict choice.

Lord Bruce-Lockhart’s proposal seems to be aimed at an underlying danger that schools may consciously or subconsciously discriminate. I suspect that danger is real. The simplest method to ensure fairness up to interview stage is to remove all ethnic identifiers from application forms. After interview stage, any accusation of discrimination can be easily checked by comparing the ethnic mix of applicants to students.

[Parvez]

There is no doubt that we do not have social cohesion because of the development of areas along ethnic lines over the last few decades. One consequence of this is that schools are also largely split along ethnic lines and the only way to reverse this trend is to consider proposals such as these fundamentally changing the catchment area rule of admission. What ever the proposal, I believe, something needs to be done otherwise the problem will get worse and not better leading to future community tensions.

[TomTom]

How about an official spawning season ? They could mandate that ethnic minority women will not outbreed white womwen so there can be a proper mix ?

The shortage of white children in this area is due to wmen failing to match the fecundity of the ethnic minorities which makes it very hard to even think of this proposal from Kent.

Obviously a proper mix of babies is essnetial for such a proposal to be effective and there should be national targets and quotas for demographic planning.

Kent does not quite have the inner city situation of Bradford, let's hope it gets there and can experience the same situation

[Rob Largan]

Unbelievable, no other words for it. How can he expect children to remain 'colour-blind' when there is a system based on ethnic quotas?

Honestly.

[Jon White]

This guy is a Conservative? God help us. This proposal is social engineering at it's absolute worst. Should we insist that Roman Catholic schools must take a proportion of Protestants? What about C of E schools being forced to take some Rastarfarians?

I truly cannot believe this is being suggested by a Conservative. They tried it in the states with 'bussing' pupils across towns so that they could 'mix' and 'integrate' with children from other ethnic groups. It was a disaster.

[SimonNewman]

"Seperation in education (and consequently in ordinary life), as I know from Northern Ireland, leads to inevitable conflict. "

I really don't think Catholics going to Catholic religious schools caused The Troubles. I don't think forced integration (banning religious schools, or making Protestant pupils go to Catholic religious schools) would have helped, either.

[SimonNewman]

"I was initially shocked by how seperate the layers of education are here in London"

The reason for that is that there are so few good schools in London! If state schools were good, the upper middle classes would let their children go there.

Having said that, France has traditionally had a very good state school sector, and an emphasis on social cohesion - no multiculturalism. If anything, race relations in France seem even worse than here though, probably the main culprit is their inflexible labour market & high unemployment, combined with unsustainable immigration levels.

[Angelo Basu]

Jon White at 1431- that appears to be precisely what Kenneth Baker has proposed in the HL! Perhaps there might be some merit in the proposal in respect of faith schools to prevent them becoming blind mono-cultures (although realistically everyone must know that this is really focused on Muslim schools).

For non-faith schools, which should be being run on the basis of no distinction between pupils due to their race or religion, a quota is a ludicrous and very unconservative idea which the author should be ashamed of.

[JPseudonym]

Further to TomTom's post...

The shortage of white children in inner city Bradford is because of the shortage of white parents. The majority of white people remaining anywhere near the centre of Bradford are old and too poor to move, otherwise they would. Bradford has a huge Pakistani ghetto of around 30 sq. miles around the city centre and it is growing pretty rapidly.

There is absolutely no chance of the Pakistani community integrating because there is no one to integrate with.

Some people may be interested in an Ofsted report about a school which is typical for the area, such as this

Ofsted report

It shows that out of 390 kids in the school only 2 are white, 2 are Indian and the rest Pakistani.

The report mentions:-

>>>
Nearly all of the pupils on the school roll speak English as an additional language and
speak Punjabi at home.
<<<

I'd like to know what David Cameron would propose for such a school. Does he honestly think that there would be an uptake for a 25% quota for whites? The man is living in cloud cuckoo land.

[MH]

Hmmm. So we ask a group of Jewish children to fill quota slots in a predominantly Muslim school. Should go down well.

[Richard]

This will not go down well with the public. Never mess with parents when it comes to their child's education. They will punish you at the ballot box.

[Denis Cooper]

There may be another possibility in some cases, and although it would initially be expensive it might be cheaper in the long run - establish a new school located so that its catchment area straddles the geographic boundaries between the different ethnic groups, say to those groups "This is your local school", and cross your fingers that this solves the problem for some decades at least. The worst of the older schools should be shut down anyway.

[Christina]

Perhaps we'll see more incidents like this one. 14 year old girl held by Police for 6 hours.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/225/225346_schoolgirl_questioned_over_racist_remark.html

Unbelievable!

[JPseudonym]

I take it that Denis Cooper has never seen white flight in action...

The idea of establishing a new school located so that its catchment area straddles the geographic boundaries between the different ethnic groups is clearly nonsensical.

Because of disproportionate birth rates between different groups schools can change from 75%/25% white/BME to 25%/75% white/BME within a period of a few years. Once schools reach a tipping point where whites are down to 50% there is a very quick exodus out of the catchment area as ghettoisation takes hold.

[Christina]

ned_over_racist_remark.html

[Mark Wadsworth]

If you apply Denis Cooper's idea to JPseudonym's statistics for Bradford, what you'd end up with is a 30 sq mile area with a ring of dozens of schools round the outside (straddling Pakistani/white areas) but no schools at all inside the Pakistani area.

How far would the poor kids in the middle of the area have to travel? The answer is up to 3.09 miles as the crow flies, assuming the 30 sq mile area is perfectly circular, OK for a secondary school kid but not on for primary school kids whose parents accompany them.

Hmmm.

[Sir Percy]

Simon said:

[quote]I don't think forced integration (banning religious schools, or making Protestant pupils go to Catholic religious schools) would have helped, either.[/quote]

I beg to differ, Simon.

That's exactly what DID work in Holland after WWII.

I understand that their Catholic/Protestant communities were at 50:50.

By banning state-funded faith schools, pupils did indeed mix and we never hear of N.Ireland-type problems there.

However, I agree with the poster who commented that we are being challenged as never before.

No country in Europe has yet successfully mastered Muslim integration.

[Denis Cooper]

I did say "in some cases", and it may well be that much of Bradford would not be such a case. However officially only 16% of the population are Muslims, equate that to Pakistanis, so isn't it a bit of an exaggeration to say "There is absolutely no chance of the Pakistani community integrating because there is no one to integrate with"? What about the other 84%? Who are they?

Strangely enough we do see the effects of white flight here in leafy Maidenhead, and we do have differential birth rates as well, but neither on such a scale that any school has changed "from 75%/25% white/BME to 25%/75% white/BME within a period of a few years." In fact I doubt it has happened that quickly in more than a few schools across the country.

[SimonNewman]

"That's exactly what DID work in Holland after WWII.

I understand that their Catholic/Protestant communities were at 50:50.

By banning state-funded faith schools, pupils did indeed mix and we never hear of N.Ireland-type problems there."

I don't think Holland ever had anything like the level of animosity in NI. I'd think the obvious result of banning faith schools in NI (where I grew up) would be all-Catholic state schools in Catholic areas, all-Protestant in Protestant areas. I do think voluntary integration can help (the state grammar school I attended in NI was about 18% Catholic and 80% Protestant, with a Jewish contingent), but forced integration in the USA seems to have only increased animosity. One thing that seems to help a lot is non-discriminatory selection - one reason race relations in the US military are pretty good is that they apply the same selection criteria across all races. One reason race relations are terrible at US Universities is that they use quota systems with different criteria for different races, which can result in big differences in aptitude between different groups of students. A student admitted to University who can't succeed no matter how hard they try, because other students admitted are all 2 standard deviations or more higher IQ, can justifiably get frustrated and angry IMO. I'm glad we haven't gone down that road here, and that the ability of the students I lecture isn't differentiated by race or ethnicity. I hope that never changes.

[TomTom]

only 16% of the population are Muslims, equate that to Pakistanis,

Well Denis I suggest you recall that Bradford is a Metropolitan Borough of 550.000 people - Maidenhead has 60.000 and the total area is 198 km2

Bradford covers 366 km2 and is 20% Asian

Pop density is 1324/km2 in Bradford and 698/km2 in Maidenhead/Windsor.

The city core is predominantly Muslim extending right into the city centre. Frizinghall is 79% Muslim and that is Bradford/Shipley.

You see Denis Bradford is in a bowl at the centre. The Muslims dominate the city centre - Barkerend, Leeds Road, Girlington, Manningham, Frizinghall, Undercliffe - around the rim are large council estates - Buttershaw, Thorpe Edge, Ravenscliffe etc...........should Muslims move out there they would probably die.

If these areas ever explode, the W Y Police can kiss it all goodbye and hope the Army can hold it together. The fact that Bradford went comprehensive and has crappy schools - near the bottom nationally with Carlton-Bolling and Emmanuel College and Cathedral City School - means the whole shambles does not improve if you shake it up.

The affluent whites and Jews have migrated towards Leeds where the white collar legal jobs and finance jobs are and move nearer Harrogate and North Yorkshire. Jews have moved from Bradford to Leeds and the synagogue on Drummond Street (in the midst of the Muslim zone now) moved years ago to Nab Wood (which is now Muslim too).............so Jews move to Leeds Grammar School and Adel as Muslim expansionism continues

The Bishop of Bradford spends his time with the Muslims because the cathedral is a bit beached in an inner city which many people no longer visit after car-jackings and armed hold-ups - women seem to feel afraid of travelling in alone.

Leeds, Harrogate, Ilkley become the shoping areas for the affluent who stay away from Bradford

[Anon]

"No country in Europe has yet successfully mastered Muslim integration.

Posted by: Sir Percy "

Please do some research before making such sweeping statements and generalisations.

If you knew what you were talking about you would have known the Austrian Muslim Community is relatively well inetegrated ans has been so officially since 1912:

http://www.euro-islam.info/pages/austria.htm

[Anon]

“Muslim expansionism

Posted by: TomTom”

Get a grip on reality; in your warped mind you probably see a planned Lebensraum project taking place.

You make it sound like all British Muslims are the enemy of fellow Brits.

Peddling an “us against them” agenda which is not what Britain or the Conservative party wants.

“How about an official spawning season ? They could mandate that ethnic minority women will not outbreed white womwen so there can be a proper mix ?

Posted by: TomTom”

Outbreed? you make women from ethnic minorities sound like animals. Maybe you should remember mothers like Ellen Morris who will no doubt prevent any imbalance in your world of ethnic group calculations:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=377701&in_page_id=1770

[Yet Another Anon]

No country in Europe has yet successfully mastered Muslim integration.
Countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Albania have had very mixed populations with little religious trouble for centuries - the main problems in those countries have largely come out of neighbouring countries but in Romania for example Calvinists, Episcopalians, Unitarians, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Muslims all live in great harmony - the country has had problems but these have mostly not been religious in nature, in fact in the 20th century it was Communist Athiests causing all the trouble. Spain has had small Muslim and Jewish populations since before the Middle Ages, it has to be said that most of the troubles there in past centuries were caused by Roman Catholics.

[Yet Another Anon]

Ethnic quotas are crazy and in fact create divisions by categorising people seperately usually by some imposed system based on the notions of the majority of how ethnic groups are comprised.

In the case of Protestant schools or Catholic schools then naturally there are divisions - the Primary school I went to although it was a state school in the East of Scotland most of the teachers were Protestant Evangelicals (Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians) with a sizeable number being lay preachers and Sunday School teachers, my first primary school teacher was a lay preacher in the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland - naturally most Protestants would prefer their children to be brought up Protestant and most Roman Catholics would prefer their children to be brought up Roman Catholic and would not want what they would see as freaks and heretics teaching their children - mostly people want people to teach their children to be politically and religiously as much as them as possible.

[JPseudonym]

TomTom writes:

" only 16% of the population are Muslims, equate that to Pakistanis,

Well Denis I suggest you recall that Bradford is a Metropolitan Borough of 550.000 people - Maidenhead has 60.000 and the total area is 198 km2

Bradford covers 366 km2 and is 20% Asian

Pop density is 1324/km2 in Bradford and 698/km2 in Maidenhead/Windsor.

The city core is predominantly Muslim extending right into the city centre. Frizinghall is 79% Muslim and that is Bradford/Shipley."

It's inaccurate to compare 'Bradford' with Maidenhead like this since you are comparing very different entities. On the one hand most people who refer to the 'City of Bradford' actually mean the metropolitan district which is two thirds rural and contains four sizable towns - Shipley, Bingley, Keighley and Ilkley as well as the old city of Bradford (pre-1973 LG reorg). If statistics for just the city were used, then a very different picture would emerge. The city itself is the same size as places like Nottingham and Leicester so could be compared more easily. Within the city you could draw a circle at a radius of three miles from the centre and you effectively mark out the ghetto. Go a further mile and it is almost like a different planet.

Population statistics are quite revealing. Apparently only around 20% of the metropolitan district are from a BME background, yet 50% of the births are.

This suggests that comparative birth rates are 4:1 BME:white.

Scary!

[Matt Davis]

Sandy is right in theory but wrong in practice. Yes it is vital to try to preserve children's initial colour blindness but initiating school admission quotas based purely upon ethnicity is absolutely not the answer, not in the real world anyway.

The MCB are quite right to remind us that it ought to be a parent's right to attempt to gain the school of their choice for their child, although again in the real world it often doesn't work out that way because of the criteria governing admissions.

What would certainly help in reducing the ghettoisation of some schoools however would be a downgrading in importance of proximity to the school as an admission criteria. Currently it is the main criterion by which most children gain their place at Primary School and so does more than anything else to ensure that where members of an individual ethnic group all live largely within a particular area then their local primary school will in turn largely contain only children from that particular ethnic group.

Lessening the importance of locality to a school in the list of criteria which schools are obliged to follow in determining admissions would help towards solving this acknowledged problem without creating ethnic quotas in education which really ought to be anathema in the 21st Century.

[TomTom]

Within the city you could draw a circle at a radius of three miles from the centre and you effectively mark out the ghetto. Go a further mile and it is almost like a different planet.

Population statistics are quite revealing. Apparently only around 20% of the metropolitan district are from a BME background, yet 50% of the births are.

This suggests that comparative birth rates are 4:1 BME:white.

Scary!

50% Bradford University first year is too..............and 40-50% all primary school children in the whole Metropolitan Borough.

Look at Challenge College for statistics and see how far that catchment is for what is basically an ethnic institution. As for 3 miles - Redburn Drive is more than 3 miles from Little Horton and Nab Wood certainly is. These are all Muslim areas of expansion and overflow.

Why should parents pay to have children bussed ? Over 2 miles they pay for transport themselves, indeed one family has one child designated for free travel and the second child designated to pay, simply because the LEA changed their calculation of distance to save money.

When schools are spending money on translators - Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Polish, Congolese dialects, Vietnamese, - look at the sign outside the police station in Lilycroft if you want the flavour - and then you want to add transport costs to these translation costs and remedial English costs..............better not try pay for this from Council Tax

[JPseudonym]

TomTom write:-

"50% Bradford University first year is too..............and 40-50% all primary school children in the whole Metropolitan Borough.

Look at Challenge College for statistics and see how far that catchment is for what is basically an ethnic institution. As for 3 miles - Redburn Drive is more than 3 miles from Little Horton and Nab Wood certainly is. These are all Muslim areas of expansion and overflow."

Statistics are very difficult to come by. Where can I get them?

I notice that Ofsted no longer provide an ethnic breakdon of school rolls. It's not surprising when you find schools like this

school a

school b

school c

These three schools are within a radius of a few hundred yards. There are another half a dozen similar schools, all full to bursting within half a mile.

How on earth is David Cameron is going to apply 25% quotas? He wouldn't even be able to fill a 5% quota.

As for the distance between Little Horton and Nab Wood - I was talking about a 3 mile *radius* not diameter. The 'ghetto' is six miles across. Of course, it isn't a perfect circle but provides a good approximation. Basically anywhere inside the ring road is inside the ghetto, although it is expanding rapidly in all directions.

[Denis Cooper]

JPseudonym @ 21:03 -

"This suggests that comparative birth rates are 4:1 BME:white. Scary!"

It is scary, and it's made worse because of the practice of importing spouses. If that happened in every case, the BME birth rate would effectively be doubled.

But I don't hear Damian Green talking about the scale of these existing problems, let alone that they can only be made worse through further immigration, including the importation of spouses followed by other relations. If further immigration was halted, then there would be a chance that over maybe half a century the ghettos would gradually disappear. With further immigration, they are certain not only to persist but to continue to expand. One might have thought that a few alarm bells would start to ring when an Islamic extremist tells the Home Secretary to his face that he shouldn't enter "a Muslim area", but apparently not.

[Opinicus]

It is far too late to do anything about it at school. Conservative policy should be to get govt/the State as far out of school policy as possible (with vouchers)

Much more useful would be to change the rule that councils have to house within their own area and to spread social housing more equitably throughout the country so as not to create ghettos.

[JPseudonym]

Denis Cooper writes:

[One might have thought that a few alarm bells would start to ring when an Islamic extremist tells the Home Secretary to his face that he shouldn't enter "a Muslim area", but apparently not.]

Don't worry, Dave has got this one covered. Expect Sayeeda Warsi to take on the mantle of Home Secretary. They are not going to tell a Muslim woman to get out of a 'Muslim area' unless she fails to turn up in a black tent of course.

Interestingly one of her potential constituents was suspended from her teaching position for wearing the veil

Dewsbury teacher suspended

How on earth would any ethnic quota system handle the school roll for such a school which is firmly in the Muslim ghetto, and where so few kids speak English?

Speaking of the Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party, I wonder how many people are aware of the mixed messages Ms Warsi is sending to white and Muslim audiences...

Ms Warsi - Forked tongue?

[TomTom]

Much more useful would be to change the rule that councils have to house within their own area and to spread social housing more equitably throughout the country so as not to create ghettos.

Posted by: Jonathan | October 13, 2006 at 14:12

You really don't understand do you ?

Muslims in Bradford do NOT live in social housing . they live in private-sector housing, either rented from a Muslim landlord, or bought on a mortgage.

Why do you assume that Muslims in Bradford live in social housing ? These prejudices are most odd. I have never heard of physically moving people from their communities where they have infrastructure into different areas - is this something you have learned from South Africa ?

[JPseudonym]

TomTom writes:

"Muslims in Bradford do NOT live in social housing . they live in private-sector housing, either rented from a Muslim landlord, or bought on a mortgage."

Let's be honest here. It's far more likely to be bought with cash than bought on a mortgage.

However they manage to acquire so much cash I'll never know...;-)

I have heard many stories of Muslims knocking on people's doors and offering to buy their nomes for cash even though they weren't for sale. I even heard about two business men with briefcases full of cash visiting a priest and offering to buy his church!

[Opinicus]

TomTom
These prejudices are most odd. I have never heard of physically moving people from their communities where they have infrastructure into different areas - is this something you have learned from South Africa ?

If they had taught Latin at your school you would have been able to call this an ad hominem attack and despise it as such

What all muslims all in private housing; I bow to your greater knowledge/certainty.

As a former Conservative I don't believe in telling people where or how to live and if they are all in private accommodation then that is no business of mine. If, however, as I greatly expect many do live in council housing or other social housing then it is possible to alter the admission rules to this resource. It is possible and in my view desirable to use these new rules to ensure that council and social housing fully reflects the overall ethnic diversity of the area and that new immigrants are more evenly spread throughout the country and do not accumulate in areas where they have neither the incentive nor the opportunity to integrate fully with the indigenous population. How can they be "their communities" if they are new to Britain? Or are you defining people solely by their colour and isn't that banned in your part of Islington?

[JPseudonym]

Jonathan:

You clearly have no idea what 50 years of chain migration from Kashmir to Bradford looks like. I suggest you find out.

Social housing plays no part at all in this ghettoisation. The vast majority of Muslims live in private housing. The possibility for this immigrant community to integrate with the indigenous community is non existant because of the wholesale abandonment of large areas of the city - white flight has been massive. I heard a figure of 100,000 but cannot substantiate it.

To get some background on the problems you would be advised to read this supplementary report to the Ouseley Report - it's quite an eye opener, but little known about

Race Relations in Bradford

[Denis Cooper]

"About 1,000 Bradfordian Muslims marry each year. If most of those marriages were internal to this country, it would lead to 500 new households which would be likely to average 4 children per household. (This is based on experience from other immigrant groups where family size usually halves that of the first generation by the second generation.) With 60% of marriages involving a spouse from overseas, the number of households goes up to 800 and, with many of the spouses being first generation, family size is likely to be significantly larger. So whereas 500 internal marriages might be expected to produce 2,000 offspring, the 800 marriages are likely to produce 4,000 offspring. This leads to very rapid population growth. In the eighties the Council estimated that the Muslim population would reach 130,000 by 2030 and then level. Now the projection is for 130,000 by 2020 and rising. The number of separate households is predicted to rise from 16,000 now to 40,000 in 2020. This rate of growth concentrated in particular areas puts severe demands on the public services. It has other ramifications. Many of the children arrive at school with little or no English. Many of those who come from overseas have little education and do not possess skills which are transferable to a Western economy. The high family size means overcrowding will be a persistent problem."

Time this was stopped - exactly how it would be formulated in law I don't know, but it has to be stopped. There has always been a generous and humane concession that if a British subject married a foreigner then the spouse would almost automatically be allowed to come and live here. This is a deliberate, systematic, ungrateful and despicable abuse of that concession, and it must be stopped. Unfortunately the necessary change to the law would also affect other people who were not abusing this traditional concession, but that can't be helped because this must be stopped.

"There are three other areas for concern. They cannot be definitely proven but there are growing indications that they are real. They are the desire for Muslim only areas, the change in attitude from immigrant to colonist and the apparent collapse of family control over their young men."

This is all down to the stupidity of national government immigration policy: there's very little that a local council can do except to try to mitigate the consequences.

And what does Damian Green have to say about any of this?

[TomTom]

Denis, Muslims may have 4 wives even if UK law only recognises one marriage, the benefits system recognises 4 sets ocf children.

Do read the Telegraph & argus when it goes online at www.thisisbradford.co.uk where it talks of Bradford being one of Britain's fastest growing cities likely to add another 150-200.000 by 2029. They will need a lot more mosques

[Sean Fear]

Denis, we could follow the Danish example, and only allow spouses to enter this country if both parties are aged over 24 at the time of marriage. It has massively cut this type of migration from Muslim countries.

This is a form of migration which not only brings no benefits to our country, but which is in fact positively harmful.

[JPseudonym]

TomTom writes:

"The Bishop of Bradford spends his time with the Muslims because the cathedral is a bit beached in an inner city which many people no longer visit after car-jackings and armed hold-ups - women seem to feel afraid of travelling in alone."

The Bishop of Bradford has an ardous task appeasing Muslims so that incidents like these do not occur more frequently

Church attacked by 50 youths


Church subject to fire attack

It is interesting to note the Bishop's observation about Christian-Muslim co-operation

Bishop of Bradford's speech in House of Lords

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In this country we have some advantages. We have an established Church. Therefore religion is on the agenda for all to talk about. Unlike Germany, Muslims in Britain have citizenship. This difficult but vital debate must take place in that context. It is not just a question of the training of imams in this country. Half a dozen of my clergy intended to go to Pakistan. They wanted to learn and to listen, the better to work with Muslims in Bradford. Therefore, they asked if they might pay a visit to a local imam training seminary. The answer was, "No, we do not want you"--a complete flat refusal. Too often clergy working in Muslim areas of the city find themselves repulsed when seeking to develop or deepen relations between mosque and church.
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[Denis Cooper]

I remember that report from 2001 about the church. Reading the speech by the Bishop I wonder if he could ever understand that the fundamental problem is not social or housing policies, but continuing and accelerating immigration?

Also I quite often see reports about "interfaith groups" and "walks for peace" etc and wonder where the rest of the population, the overwhelming majority who aren't regularly and closely involved with any religion and who basically live more or less secular lives, are supposed to fit into that kind of approach? There may be some problems between devout Muslims and devout Christians in this country, but the principle problems are between Muslims and secular society.

[TomTom]

St Philip's Church in the Girlington area

Ironically the school associated with this church, St. Philips C of E has 310 pupils of whom 299 speak English "as an additional language" and of these "91 are at an early stage of learning English"

4% pupils are from "white UK heritage"

http://tinyurl.com/y4u4be

This is a Church of England School - no doubt it will boost its White UK Heritage children from 4% to 25% with ease....................

[JPseudonym]

TomTom writes:-

"This is a Church of England School - no doubt it will boost its White UK Heritage children from 4% to 25% with ease...................."

It might be somewhat held back by the fact that there are around a dozen other primary schools within half a mile whose proportion of white kids varies from 0% to 5%.

But hey, let's not call it a ghetto. There aren't any ghettos in Bradford. Bradford's Director of Policy, Kersten England declared as much.

Segregation in Bradford

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She said there were no "ghettos" in the city.
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Quite a breathtaking statement if I may be so bold...

It's ironic that the chair of the governers at that school, a CofE vicar, actually sent his kids to the only RC school in the area.

[TomTom]

http://tinyurl.com/ymemen

Muslim V A School enforces uniform on non-Muslims !

http://tinyurl.com/yj6wu8

Assistant principal of the LIA said: "Like any school, we will have a uniform and in our case that will include a head scarf.
"When you go to any school you will know what the school uniform will be and the choice is there.
"I can't see why if a student wears a head scarf it should be an issue. It is the same as a shirt or tie – it's just part of our uniform.
"We will welcome students of other faiths. Indeed, there will be a quota set down by Government and we will abide by these rules."

LEA Girls School largely Muslim

http://www.bvg.ngfl.ac.uk/school_clothing.htm

Uniform Policy

[TomTom]

http://www.togetherwecan.info/civicpioneers/network/bradford.html

Kersten England
Director
Policy & Performance
7th Floor
Jacob's Well
Bradford, BD1 5RW
[email protected]

http://www.bradfordvision.net/aboutus_delivery.php

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/letters.cfm?id=1800842005

Islam and democracy

In his Platform article (15 August), John Stewart proposed a "new apartheid" for Britain as a means to resolve "the fundamental incompatibility between Islam and democracy".

I offer a few facts and observations as a Scot now resident in Bradford, and the person responsible in the local authority for community and race relations.

Bradford had the first-ever Asian, and indeed Muslim, lord mayor in the 1980s. Turnout levels for local and general elections are high, exceeding national averages in the predominantly Muslim communities of Bradford; of 90 local councillors, there are 21 Muslim councillors, men and women, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem and Green. I hardly feel this demonstrates a "fundamental incompatibility" rather a community investing in the practices and institutions of representative democracy.

Further, all communities are working together in Bradford to build a vibrant and integrated civil society.

Our experience tells us, as does evidence from the Asian sub-continent, that where there are strong mutual bonds of respect between communities that inter-communal and inter-ethnic conflict is minimised.

Perhaps John Stewart should visit Belfast and tour the interface arenas and "peace walls" which provide the grounds for frequent violent confrontations between partitioned communities. There is nothing new about apartheid, or its bitter fruits which are bigotry and violence.

KERSTEN ENGLAND
Director of Policy, City of Bradford Council
Shipley
Yorkshire

[Sean Fear]

Yep, relations are so good in Bradford, that the BNP won 28% in the wards making up Bradford South in May.

Indeed, talk about integration vs multiculturalism is meaningless while we have a policy of unlimited immigration into the UK.

[JPseudonym]

Sean Fear writes:-

"Indeed, talk about integration vs multiculturalism is meaningless while we have a policy of unlimited immigration into the UK."

More to the point, talk about integration itself is meaningless in the context of a 30 sq mile Muslim ghetto, especially one which is expanding so rapidly.

What opportunity for integration is there?

[Sonya Porter]

As to the increasing number of immigrants to this country, has anyone thought of this:
A large percentage of home-grown girls go to Uni, come out at 21, start a career, establish a career, finally meet and marry about 30 and then think about having children in their 30s. This is with Tony's encouragement. A large percentage of immigrant girls marry about 20 and have their children early.This means that the home-grown have 3 generations in 100 years while immigrants have four generations in 100 years.

[JPseudonym]

Sonya Porter writes:

"A large percentage of immigrant girls marry about 20 and have their children early.This means that the home-grown have 3 generations in 100 years while immigrants have four generations in 100 years."

Sonya, you are on the right lines and you will get there eventually...

According to Ann Cryer

Forced marriage scandal

300 girls a year, some as young as 12 are taken out of schools in Bradford and sent over to Pakistan to become child brides. So you are almost right, except for the fact that these Muslim girls are likely to have two or three kids or even more by the time they are 20. They are also likely to have much bigger families than there white counterparts.

Perhaps this is why the population of Bradford has just been estimated to grow by a staggering 25% in the next 25 years.

Bradford population to soar

I would estimate that 70% or more of that growth will be in the Pakistani population.

The projected growth is higher than anywhere else in the country and it spells disaster since the district is in terminal economic decline, Muslim unemployment rate is huge, academic achievement 50% below the national average, and community leaders are already warning about the possible growth in extremism with current unemployment levels

Concerns over rise in ethnic minority jobless

A million well educated, keen and hungry Poles on the doorstep ready to snap up any available work only serves to exacerbate the situation.

Personally I can't wait to get away as far as possible before the whole place blows up.

Can someone suggest to me how David Cameron's 25% ethnic quotas in schools are expected to work in a place like Bradford?

Perhaps he should concentrate on how to dampen the population growth rate instead, since disaster looms.

[deborah]

TomTom (15.28),
I've just followed your links and they are really scary.
It is reasonable for schools to offer the option of a school uniform which covers head and legs. When all girls - moslem or not - are required to wear moslem dress, things are going way too far.

[www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawnFuv19LL79s9HGZDNmrU88caWb8JZYKo4]

Free Our Schools
Almost all children now believe they go to school to pass exams. The idea that they may be there for an education is irrelevant. State schools have become exam factories, interested only in A to C Grades. They do not educate children. Exam results do not reflect a candidate’s innate ability. Employers have moaned for years that too many employees cannot read or write properly. According to a survey, school-leavers and even graduates lack basic literacy and numeracy skills. More and more companies are having to provide remedial training to new staff, who can’t write clear instructions, do simple maths, or solve problems. Both graduates and school-leavers were also criticised for their sloppy time-keeping, ignorance of basic customer service and lack of self-discipline.

Bilingual Muslims children have a right, as much as any other faith group, to be taught their culture, languages and faith alongside a mainstream curriculum. More faith schools will be opened under sweeping reforms of the education system in England. There is a dire need for the growth of state funded Muslim schools to meet the growing needs and demands of the Muslim parents and children. Now the time has come that parents and community should take over the running of their local schools. Parent-run schools will give the diversity, the choice and the competition that the wealthy have in the private sector. Parents can perform a better job than the Local Authority because parents have a genuine vested interest. The Local Authority simply cannot be trusted.

The British Government is planning to make it easier to schools to “opt out” from the Local Authorities. Muslim children in state schools feel isolated and confused about who they are. This can cause dissatisfaction and lead them into criminality, and the lack of a true understanding of Islam can ultimately make them more susceptible to the teachings of fundamentalists like Christians during the middle ages and Jews in recent times in Palestine. Fundamentalism is nothing to do with Islam and Muslim; you are either a Muslim or a non-Muslim.

There are hundreds of state primary and secondary schools where Muslim pupils are in majority. In my opinion all such schools may be opted out to become Muslim Academies. This mean the Muslim children will get a decent education. Muslim schools turned out balanced citizens, more tolerant of others and less likely to succumb to criminality or extremism. Muslim schools give young people confidence in who they are and an understanding of Islam’s teaching of tolerance and respect which prepares them for a positive and fulfilling role in society. Muslim schools are attractive to Muslim parents because they have better discipline and teaching Islamic values. Children like discipline, structure and boundaries. Bilingual Muslim children need Bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods, who understand their needs and demands.

None of the British Muslims convicted following the riots in Bradford and Oldham in 2001 or any of those linked to the London bombings had been to Islamic schools. An American Think Tank studied the educational back ground of 300 Jihadists; none of them were educated in Pakistani Madrasas. They were all Western educated by non-Muslim teachers. Bilingual Muslim children need bilingual Muslim teachers as role models. A Cambridge University study found that single-sex classes could make a big difference for boys. They perform better in single-sex classes. The research is promising because male students in the study saw noticeable gains in the grades. The study confirms the Islamic notion that academic achievement is better in single-sex classes.
Iftikhar Ahmad
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk