In a week when campaigning MP David Lammy crossed swords with Oxford University about the tiny number of black students admitted to its dreaming spires, it was interesting to see the publication of a piece of research that demonstrated the benefits of increasing diversity. The BBC headlined it: “Ethnically mixed schools lessen hostility.”

London School of Economics and University of Bristol surveyed the attitudes of 4,000 teenagers in English maintained schools. They found that pupils in secondary schools with a more diverse racial mix are much more positive about people of different ethnicities. The more diverse the school, the less hostility to other ethnic groups: the most common groups were white British, Asian British and black British.

Crucially, perhaps, the views of white British pupils were particularly likely to shift when they were at school with other ethnicities. Nonetheless, even in a completely integrated school, a core of 20 per cent will still hold negative views of other groups.

Bristol’s Professor Simon Burgess commented: “Encouragingly for policymakers, our results show that even small moves away from largely mono-ethnic schools towards more mixed ones produce positive changes… it is not the case than anything short of full integration is pointless.”

So, no wringing of hands and claiming there’s nothing to be done. Nor, by contrast, any commandment for the wholesale bussing of students from one community into another: last-century experiments in both the USA and the UK demonstrated the weaknesses inherent in that policy.

The power of diversity

Clearly, though, there’s a challenge for schools whose setting renders them near-enough mono-cultural. Let’s not forget the 2014 row over Ofsted’s clumsy criticism of Middle Rasen Primary School, Lincolnshire: “Pupils’ cultural development is limited by the lack of first-hand experience of the diverse make-up of modern British society.”

A tough situation for the school wasn’t helped by The Daily Telegraph’s inaccurate reporting: “School marked down by Ofsted for being ‘too white’… parents angered after Lincolnshire primary school marked down by inspectors for not having enough black or Asian children.”

That fuss was unhelpful, because there is a real issue. Much as I love to visit the remoter corners of Britain, I’ve always been pleased that my family grew up in Wolverhampton, a multicultural city very much at ease with itself and where I worked for 27 years.

When, a decade ago, I moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, I expected to find a less mixed student body. But my academic city-centre school sat between three teaching hospitals and two universities: although the proportion of students from ethnic minorities was smaller overall, the diversity within that minority was broader, not least because academics and medics come to Newcastle from all over the world.

My experience as a head reflects the LSE/Bristol research. We humans are, if left to ourselves, intrinsically wary of difference: but, where we encounter difference routinely, most of us (80 per cent, according to the research) not only get used to it but welcome it in our peers, colleagues and neighbours.

To be sure, teenagers can be unpleasant to one another. Bullying, still the scourge of schools and society, frequently singles out difference for its target (ask any redhead): so taunts are as often racist as sexist or homophobic. Nonetheless, a community’s diversity helps it to combat such nastiness.

The specialist music school I currently run draws a quarter of its talented musicians from more than 20 overseas countries, funded not by wealthy parents but by the government’s Music and Dance Scheme or its own bursaries. Diversity is thus a fact of life, undoubtedly seen by the students themselves as a major strength of the school.

In such a diverse setting, they recognise difference, to be sure: but they value it, and make the most of it. At the end of my long learning journey as a head, that fact has contributed to one of the most fascinating and rewarding experiences I’ve enjoyed.

Another reason for Oxford University increasing its diversity, then: it will probably make its achievements even greater.

Dr Bernard Trafford is a writer, educationalist and musician. He is a former headteacher of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle, and past chair of HMC. He is currently interim headteacher of the Purcell School in Hertfordshire. He tweets @bernardtrafford