School Segregation App

This is a development version of a web application that visualizes school segregation in the United Kingdom. It allows users to select a local authority and view the segregation plots. Segplots are a method for visualising school segregation (see here). For some example segplots, and examples on how to interpret them please see example_segplots.pdf.

This tool could, in theory, be adapted/extended to visualise other types of segregation in other locations.

For Developers

In the current setup we have:

1. R-scripts (📁segDataPrep/): A series of R-scripts and Stata scripts used to process data on school segregation (credit to Stuart Lane and Rob Gruijters). All outputs are written to 📁segDataPrep/outputs/ folder in this directory. These outputs contain all segplots, but also metadata describing: which plots are generated; where they are stored; the legends associated with these plots. The scripts are designed to be run in numerical order. Dependencies are managed using renv.

2. React App (📁app/): A React app that displays the segregation plots. The application, hosted on github pages, uses shapefiles from the ONS geoportal to generate a map of local authority districts. A short form allows users to filter by school time, segregation type, and time frame. Using this query, the application fetches the corresponding segplot stored in the 📁segDataPrep/outputs/ folder. The application is recompiled and deployed to github pages using github actions, see .github/workflows/deploy.yml for more details.