Featured graphic. Parental 'choice' and sociospatial segregation in a UK city: access to the best state-funded secondary schools for Black Somali pupils

摘要

Following the rise of the neoliberalism in the 1980s (Harvey, 2005), education policy in England has been based around the polemic of consumer (parental) choice, but without explicit acknowledgement that, 'choice' is not evenly distributed throughout society either socially (Kaufmann et al, 2004; Reay, 2012) spatially (Burgess et al, 2011). During an analysis of school commuting for the city of Sheffield (in Yorkshire, UK), it became evident that Black secondary pupils (aged 11-16) were travelling significantly further from home to school than all other ethnic groups in the city. While White British secondary pupils travelled the shortest mean distance of all ethnic groups to school-an average of 2.5 km; children of Afro-Caribbean descent travelled just under 4 km; pupils in the Black African: Other category travelled an average of 4.27 km; and pupils of Black Somali heritage travelled 4.35 km on average-the furthest of any ethnic group. However, while the longer distances travelled by Black Afro-Caribbean and African: Other pupils were at least partly explained by higher rates of attendance at Christian faith schools (which were further away from home), this was not the case for Black pupils of Somali descent. No Somali pupils attended either of the state-funded Catholic high schools in Sheffield during the four school years from 2007/08 to 2010/11. This is likely to be at least in part because the predominant religion of this community is Islam, which may exclude the option of attending a Christian faith school. Voluntary-aided faith schools also set their own selection criteria which may limit access to this type of school for children from more deprived backgrounds through educational disadvantage.