Ethnic diversity of london independent schools

[WCC1985]

Does anyone have any idea about the ethnic diversity of the following schools?
Latymer Upper
Hampton
Emmanuel
Kingston Grammar
Whitgift
Bancroft
Caterham
Ipstock Place

That at all that's supposed to say! Not people from Thailand!

You can get a good sense by following on Twitter. E.g. this….from Emanuel: twitter.com/ems_sport/status/1446824132482588672?s=21

Oh Dear! the school is pushing a lot of white faces in its website. I could see only one South East Asian face and one South Asian face after literally hunting for 5 mins. Is this the real demography of a school in Battersea ??

@dreadingthetime

Oh Dear! the school is pushing a lot of white faces in its website. I could see only one South East Asian face and one South Asian face after literally hunting for 5 mins. Is this the real demography of a school in Battersea ??

Weellll... as per the previous page, it is at least nominally a Christian school. There are certainly other religious schools in the area that are even less reprensentative.

www.google.com/search?q=Al-Risalah+Trust+School+tooting&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiAxriT_MHzAhVYwIUKHXOwAZoQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=Al-Risalah+Trust+School+tooting&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzoHCCMQ7wMQJ1CaggFYj4kBYMKKAWgAcAB4AIABQogBzAOSAQE5mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=zfljYcCrF9iAlwTz4IbQCQ&bih=722&biw=1536&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB950GB950

I honestly think you should not worry about this. London and by personal experience the private schools are ethnically diverse. Much than many other countries in the world.

We decided not to go private after all after a pretty harrowing 11 plus experience and disillusionment with the tutoring and hothousing at our prep.
One of the positive things about the independent schools in London is the diversity and many children from multiple ethnic groups. So I really don't think lack of ethnic diversity is a problem in London.
The coeds may be slightly less due to cultural preferences for single sex education or because single sex schools top the leagues but overall they are very diverse and racism is pretty much non existent. What you don't get is social diversity though the top secondary schools do have and encourage bursary places.

Of the schools you mention, LU is easily the most ethnically diverse because they have a very strong bursary programme and actively recruit pupils from the surrounding, very diverse area. It's not just about skin colour though, there are children from scores of different nationalities - off the top of my head Turkish, Bosnian, Greek, Polish etc etc.

In NE London, Bancrofts has a majority (maybe 60 ish percent) of south Asian pupils. The state grammars (Woodford, ilford) have an even higher percentage. Forest has an overall white majority, though is still reasonably diverse compared to UK population. I think that's also true of the north London independent schools I've seen, e.g. highgate, UCS.
I looked at a few schools around Dulwich a few years ago and they seemed startlingly white/blonde in comparison.

We are S Asian and DS is at City of London Boys, but he had sixth form offers from many of the schools mentioned above, including Whitgift. CLS is incredibly diverse, but I thought Whitgift was also pretty diverse. Very happy with CLS not just for diversity, but in every aspect. Wonderful school which helped DS settle into sixth form with no trouble at all. We are professionals and the students there are often wealthier than us, but it has not made a difference.

Oh he had offers from Hampton and Alleyns. These two did strike me as rather white. Of course, I only had a cursory glimpse on entrance test day. I think you would be fine at Whitgift and they have fantastic sports. The head was also very welcoming and kind, and really took the time to chat to my son.

You really can’t assess the ethnic diversity of a school by looking at their sports team photos.

Friends who moved to Surrey complain its very white compared to London and they are white themselves. Location makes a huge difference. So how white a school isn't due to attitudes.
All private schools will have S Asian and E Asian heritage students due to importance placed on education from families.
All the South London schools have more black children.
Emanuel does seem more white as does Alleyns.
I agree LU is the most richly diverse. That part of west London really is a melting pot, racially and socially. I grew up there.

You really can't judge from sports! There's also genetics at play here, look at Olympics or international sports, some dominate certain sports for physicality reasons.

@eglantine7

Friends who moved to Surrey complain its very white compared to London and they are white themselves. Location makes a huge difference. So how white a school isn't due to attitudes. All private schools will have S Asian and E Asian heritage students due to importance placed on education from families. All the South London schools have more black children. Emanuel does seem more white as does Alleyns. I agree LU is the most richly diverse. That part of west London really is a melting pot, racially and socially. I grew up there.

That's not true about Alleyns. My child's class is 40% BAME @eglantine7

That may have been true at one point but that's certainly not true now. There are a lot of mixed race children potentially compared to the other schools.

I stand corrected. It was something I'd heard about to be honest as I'm not from SE London.

@annaseal

Will the schools not represent more or less the ethnic diversity of the community where they are situated? There will be few students who might travel from bit far off places, but I would assume majority will be from an easy commutable distance.

Are you joking? Private schools in London do not reflect the ethnic diversity of where they are situated. How can you even think that?

@Chicchicchicchiclana Agreed!

@Chicchicchicchiclana - I genuinely don't understand what you're saying. I mean, I'm familiar with the words but not what you're trying to get at. Are you literally suggesting that there's no relation between ethnicity and affluence? Literally, no relation?

here's an example from my 'neck of the woods' in SW12, so two schools that I know well. two schools whose grounds back onto each other, so the distance between them is zero metres.

exhibit 1, Hornsby House (fee paying) prep school - this is a recent whole year group photo [and as such not prone to bias from e.g. picking a photo from a particular club or something] media.pressburst.com/hornsbyhouse/0f33eb502d2911e8ad1425a2a8d4dc87/default.jpg. speaks for itself, right?

exhibit 2, Chestnut Grove (comprehensive) secondary school. I couldn't find a comparable photo but this from its most recent Ofsted:

"The majority of students are from a Black and minority ethnic heritage..."

files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50060138

In terms of photos, as I said none of these are directly comparable with the Hornsby one but they're telling enough.

www.google.com/search?q=chestnut+grove+sw12+pupils&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjO1tbf7MrzAhVEHBoKHb2ADgQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=chestnut+grove+sw12+pupils&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1CwBli2DmDrEGgAcAB4AIABNogB6gGSAQE1mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=m6FoYY6dOcS4aL2BuiA&bih=722&biw=1536&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB950GB950

according to google, the two schools are 0.2 miles apart, I suppose that's from front door to front door or something.

www.google.com/maps/dir/Chestnut+Grove+Academy,+Chestnut+Grove,+London/Hornsby+House+School,+Hearnville+Rd,+London+SW12+8RS/@51.4449352,-0.1576803,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x487605c44d86acb5:0xf03cc6cbfdea78d8!2m2!1d-0.1552944!2d51.4445759!1m5!1m1!1s0x487605c443026f9f:0x5207ad8f40181194!2m2!1d-0.156533!2d51.4445397!3e2

apologies, on re-reading I suppose you were (none too hilariously) joking.

One is a prep ( primary) though and the other a state secondary.
Could it be there are more White children in preps compared to independent senior? 🤔

The independent sector is not mostly white. Across the country about 33% of the independent sector is BAME. In London the average is 50%.

www.isc.co.uk/media-enquiries/isc-blogs/diversity-in-the-independent-education-sector/

[quote SouthLondonMommy]The independent sector is not mostly white. Across the country about 33% of the independent sector is BAME. In London the average is 50%.

www.isc.co.uk/media-enquiries/isc-blogs/diversity-in-the-independent-education-sector/[/quote]
Right.

Since everyone on this therad seems to be tiptoeing around the gory details, I'll try to lay it out in very simple terms.

Look at the table 'Percentage of households in average weekly income bands, by ethnicity', www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/work-pay-and-benefits/pay-and-income/household-income/latest.

Focus on the last column, which shows you the proportion, by ethnicity, of households with a weekly income of above £2k, i.e. an annual income of over £100k. Nearly all families who educate their kids privately are somewhere in the upper regions of this band.

Compared with "White British", "Indian" families are over twice as likely to be in the top income bracket. "Pakistani", "Black", and Bangladeshi" roughly half as likely.

So in an area where "diversity" often means Indian [most obviously if it means Indian who got here via East Africa, i.e. Kenya, Uganda, etc], private schools are often very Indian [usually with plenty of white, of course]. Indian kids are overwhelmingly the main driver of the high "BAME" [a meaningless umbrella term] numbers in UK private schools.

In an area where "diversity" often means Black and or Pakistani [SW12 above being a great example], private schools are often very white.

End.

@puffyisgood very well explained.

@puffyisgood

No one is tiptoeing around anything. There are wealth disparities by ethnicity in the UK and in most other Western countries.

I was providing information about how ethnically diverse schools are which is the advice the OP was asking for... It's incorrect to suggest independent schools are mostly white.

I am not aware that there is a breakdown of the BAME population into subcategories within independent schools but my personal experience in South London, is there are good numbers of black families in the independent sector: about 10% in my daughter's class. We are one such black family and I do think black families disproportionately apply to certain schools that have a reputation for having black students.

South London has a disproportionate share of London's black population so its schools are likely outliers in this respect. The UK is about 3% black overall so I wouldn't expect there to be large numbers of black students in the private sector in most parts of the country either.

Anyway, OP, private schools are not all white and the exact mix of ethnicities you'll see will depend on where the school is located with London being the most diverse location understandably. As has been mentioned before, if a school that is diverse is important to you, you'll have lots of options though East Asians are a very small proportion of the population of London so I'm not aware of any school with huge proportions.

Good luck with your search.