Diverse primary/secondary schools

[user1497690815]

Hi,
I moving to Cambridge to be with my partner as his jobs means he has to stay there. I am black and I would like our kids to not be the only black kids in their class. Are there any diverse, good schools in Cambridge, I'm finding it hard to find info on this. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

The larger city centre schools are quite diverse: st Matthews, Morley, at Luke's, as well as the schools in arbury, Chesterton and cherry Hinton. This was a while ago now though, things may have changed.

I think most of the city would be quite diverse now, my friend and her family are black and her daughters are at Chesterton Community College. I am in a village just outside and there are 21 languages spoken in our school so that gives you an indication of the make-up of the area. Good luck with your move, Cambridge is awesome!

I think you'll find most city school pretty diverse. Queen Edith in the south of the city opens on its web site with:
" We have a diverse catchment area and have many families from abroad (speaking 28 languages at the last count!)."
The catchment is just as diverse as far as skin colour and income class are concerned.
I would assume that queen Emma school round the corner is very similar.

Cambridge is a diverse, international city and consequently most of the city centre primary schools are pretty diverse in terms of ethnicity, religion, languages, etc. St Matthew's Primary and Parkside Community College (secondary) are both very good schools.

The better schools in Cambridge do tend to be oversubscribed, and so you will need to live well with the catchment area to have a good chance of getting a place.

I think at last count there were 54 languages spoken at Milton Road Primary. As long as you don't go out to the villages you'll be fine!

Also Chesterton Community College very diverse.

I'm surprised by these answers. Yes, Cambridge is an international city, but it's not exactly ethnically diverse. We have a lot of different nationalities and languages but most of those people are still white. The whole of East Anglia is pretty white and Cambridge is probably a bit better but nothing like most other UK cities.

I wonder if the schools publish figures for diversity including ethnicity as well as nationality?

Hmm, ok a bit confused now. I guess if I looked perhaps at individual ofsted reports I could find out.

Thanks for all the replies

I don't agree Name Change. Obviously if you compare Cambridge schools to those in eg Hackney then yes, more students will be white. But it's not Devon. If OP wants her mixed race children to be in the majority then maybe Cambridge isn't the place, but if she wants them to be at school with a wide range of racial and cultural backgrounds and above all in a tolerant, outward-looking city where they are unlikely to encounter racial prejudice, then Cambridge has got to be a good bet.

University of Cambridge Primary School is very diverse. Only 1 'white british' boy in my DD reception class of 30 kids

I agree that Cambridge is incredibly culturally diverse and most schools will have huge numbers of kids speaking English as an additional language and from an incredibly varied background. My experience is that lots of different nationalities are represented instead of large numbers of kids from just a couple of nationalities. So, instead of large numbers of kids from Pakistan or India for instance, you might have a handful from Pakistan but also a handful from from Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, South Africa, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, China, India etc.

St Matthews is certainly very international (like flip320 I think my DS's class has almost nobody fully english, maybe 2 or 3 out of 30), and relatively ethnically diverse, but all the same there are very few black children. As in, I actually can't think of any

I think it says it all really that people are gushing about how "culturally diverse" Cambridge is, but you can't think of any black children!
As white people it's very easy to congratulate ourselves about what an international city we live in. But I am always struck by the lack of ethnic diversity (even though it's diverse when it comes to nationalities).

That's a good point namechange, although to be fair, St Matthews IS ethnically reasonably diverse compared to the rest of the country if not to London. I'd say there are maybe 8 or 9 non-white children per class of 30 - in my kids classes there are quite a number chinese and japanese kids, some middle eastern, some from the indian subcontinent. Just not many black children.

sorry, number of

This data is from 2011:
www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/may/18/ethnic-population-england-wales
In Cambridge, 3.14% of the population is black. That's slightly higher than the national average for England (2.94%) but it's lower than these major cities:
London 10.12%
Birmingham 6.57%
Manchester 4.84%

Cross post romsey, it took me a while to look up the figures for my last post and I missed yours!

I agree with you that the "non-white" population of Cambridge is mostly Asian, Indian, etc and not black.

I hope that doesn't/wouldn't put black people off moving here, but I also think it's a bit disingenuous to boast of diversity when it could be better.

St Philip's is pretty diverse. Good mix of all nationalities, backgrounds and ethnic groups.

I also think it's a bit disingenuous to boast of diversity when it could be better

Cambridge schools (IME) are sufficiently diverse that no one group seems to predominate, not even the native white English population (for want of a better way of putting it). This is particularly the case because so many children have mixed backgrounds with parents originating from two different countries/cultures and speaking two different languages at home.

Therefore though it may indeed be the case that in a class of 30, there are only 1 or 2 black children, the other 28 could well be composed of 2 Chinese origin children, 3 Indian origin, 2 Pakistani origin, 2 French, 1 Finnish, 1 Polish, 1 Italian, 1 Israeli, etc etc.

Anyway, diversity is not a competition, but my point is that a child of any ethnicity or cultural/language background won't stand out, and is likely to be made very welcome, in Cambridge city schools.

It really isn't the case though that there'll be one or two black children in an average class of 30 in Cambridge!! Not even close. That's not to say that any child of any ethnicity wouldn't be made welcome in most Cambridge schools - there is definitely diversity there - but if the OP is looking for her children not to be the only black kids in their class, then in Cambridge that is unfortunately likely to be a difficult ask.

Exactly, romseyroo. Statistically, 3.14% means just under 1 child in every class of 30. That means most black children will be the only black child in the class.

For info, at Queen Edith's School DD's class is approx 1/3 White British (from my knowedge of the children and their parents) and there are two black children in the class.

Yes though in practice it won't quite work like that name change - the age and class makeup of different ethnicities will make a big difference. At a guess, there are more black children in Kings Hedges than in Newnham.

Yes of course. Just an average innit