School Busing in Britain: Policies and Perceptions

In 1965 the British Department of Education and Science promulgated a policy encouraging local education authorities to disperse immigrant children, by busing if necessary, from schools in which they constituted more than one third of the enrollment. This legitimized the practice by a few authorities of busing Asian and West Indian children out of neighborhood schools where there was racial imbalance. Although busing never became widely practiced, it was challenged by minority group members as being discriminatory. In 1975 the Race Relations Board issued a ruling that busing did constitute racial discrimination unless it could be shown that the children needed special language training. The major opposition to busing came from minority groups and was expressed in much the same terms as white opposition to busing in the United States. Comparing the origins of school busing in Britain and the United States, Lewis Killian concludes that busing can best be understood as a political issue rather than in terms of educational effects.