White flight ... to the real world of the comp

White middle-class children whose parents make the "risky" decision to send them to the local comprehensive go on to shine, a study has found.

Many affluent families avoid local secondaries because of concerns about bullying, behaviour and educational standards, instead choosing to go private or try to get their children into top state schools.

But new research based on interviews with 180 families found that children who go to "demonised" comprehensives went on to pass all their GCSEs and A-levels. Fifteen per cent gained places at Oxbridge.

Professor David James, one of the researchers, said that while most white middle-class parents made efforts to get their children into top state or private schools, a "small but significant minority" deliberately sought out socially mixed schools.

He said: "We wanted to discover what motivates parents who ... choose to send children to local comprehensives that appear to be performing poorly."

Sir Paul McCartney famously sent his eldest children to his local comprehensive - Thomas Peacocke Community College in Rye - and was so delighted that it has been reported he wants his youngest daughter Beatrice to go there too. Those who avoided comprehensives include Labour MP Dianne Abbott, who rejected schools in Hackney as too rough for her son, and sent him to the private City of London School.

The findings were based on interviews in London and two other cities.

The researchers concluded: "These parents positioned themselves in a way we termed a 'darker shade of pale', as part of a more culturally tolerant and even anti-racist white middle class. "They felt strongly that higherachieving schools, which were often less socially and ethnically mixed, would not provide the kind of experience of the real world their children needed."

However, the researchers found little evidence that middle-class children formed friendships across class and ethnic boundaries. Instead, these children tended to be grouped together in the top ability sets, where they received extra attention from teachers anxious to ensure they got the best grades - which helped the schools climb league tables.

But some of the parents interviewed - were mainly self-described " Leftwingers" with degrees who worked in the public sector - shared the prejudices of other families who chose grammar or private schools.

Many confessed to fearing the white working classes, whom they branded "chavs" and "white trash". One London mother, named only as Vicky, admitted she felt "sick" about sending her children to a comprehensive. "You could say it's racism, it's classism, but with our local comprehensive it was fear, it's fear that you're sending your child into a lesser environment, somewhere where they're not going to be able to do as well," she said. "The first term I just felt sick, the whole time. I would like it to be the norm for people to go to their local school and not be scared in the way that I was scared."

The research was commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council and carried out by academics from the universities of Cambridge, Sunderland and West of England.