Boris rejects 'ghetto schools' claim by head

Boris Johnson today attacked claims by a private school headteacher that London was "sleepwalking" into apartheid.

The Mayor defended the capital as a champion of diversity after David Levin, headmaster of City of London Boys' School, said the parts of the capital are becoming ghettoes as school pupils of different races do not mix.

Mr Levin said: "London is sleepwalking towards Johannesburg, the ghettoisation of the communities.

"I grew up in South Africa, where apartheid was imposed by the government. People had to live in different areas.

"Increasingly, I am alarmed at the way London is divided into ghettos. We've become a silo society."

But a spokesman for the Mayor said: "Apartheid was a grotesque system imposed by law and backed by force, excluding millions from the most basic rights. London is the home of parliamentary democracy.

"Every citizen is protected under the law. We champion diversity and actively seek to address deprivation and under-achievement wherever we find it. Every community has their failures and every one has their great success stories.

"This Mayor will always seek to unite Londoners and focus on what diverse communities have in common, not what divides them."

Mr Levin said Stepney Green School - where he runs outreach projects - is full of Bangladeshi pupils who do not leave their estate.

Ninety seven per cent of pupils at Stepney Green Maths and Computing and Science College in Tower Hamlets, a boys' school, are from a Bangladeshi background. It is rated outstanding by education watchdog Ofsted.

Mr Levin said he feared pupils at the school and others like it were not mixing with people from other cultures.

Speaking at the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, Mr Levin said: "A number of those children, through no fault of their own, haven't been outside their council estate let alone outside Tower Hamlets. This cannot be a good thing."