To wonder which school a Catholic 'English' girl would have gone to school in Northern Ireland in the 1990 s !

[mountford100]

I was watching Derry girls last night and what struck me was the boy cousin of one of the characters was unable to attend the boys school.
This was because he was English and would have faced problems regarding bullying and his nationality, despite being a Catholic himself.

This is of interest to me because i am a Catholic English girl, whose mother emigrated to England from Donegal when she was 8 .

I have only ever lived in England . However, the fact the cousin on Derry Girls had to attend a girls school, has made me curious as to which school i would have attended .

This being if my mother had decided to go to Northern Ireland in the 1990s , where most of her cousins live.

I know this is not applicable any more because two of my cousins DDs attend a non Catholic girls grammar in Belfast.

This post is sectarian and implies all Irish Catholics are xenophobic. It makes the presumption that an English Catholic child would be bullied based on a fictional tv comedy. Would you make an inflammatory statement like this about Muslims? I bet you wouldn't.

I know this is not applicable any more because two of my cousins DDs attend a non Catholic girls grammar in Belfast !

Red - similar here.

My Irish Catholic father married my English Protestant mother (her own mother is from NI) who, when meeting her future MIL for the 1st time Waxed lyrical about lovely holidays in NI as a child going along with uncles and aunts to the 'lovely lively marches'

They adored her in the end. But it took some working.

We (myself and siblings) were raised Catholic and my mother remained Protestant. She is still quite god-y now. We were bullied by our Irish cousins on both sides for having an English mum or a Catholic dad .

Couldn't win!

Can anybody remember reading "The twelfth day of July" in school as a novel in the '80's? It was probably meant to enlighten us...it failed miserably!

It´s an interesting question. I was at a Protestant school in the 1990s rather than a Catholic so I can´t say what it would have been like there, but you may be right that you could have experienced bullying had you moved to NI. At my school, there were kids with English and American accents. Tbh, we weren't great at accepting their differences to us and looking back I suspect that they had a harder time at school than they really should have, had we been a bit more open to cultural differences. At that time there really wasn´t any immigrant population to speak of there so we were all the same, sounded the same, same cultural background. Any difference at all stuck out like a sore thumb and even if we weren't bullying, I don´t think we were overly tolerant of difference...

Methody is a Protestant religious school. It had a lot of catholic pupils in the nineties and many overseas pupils too. Bullying was quite rife but not along Protestant/Catholic/furriner lines.

Also as pp have said I have experienced staggering racism and prejudice on many occasions in England and indeed at uni everyone seemed very cliquey and to know one another from big private schools in London - I used to cry in freshers year at how left out culturally and socially I would be sometimes (quite unintentionally, teenagers can just be selfish!) I would never extrapolate these experiences across the country, it’d be laughable.

Mountford I do think by the latter nineties things were slightly better but certainly during the 70's and 80's there was widespread slaughter on the streets. Nobody knew who to trust and anybody "different" was regarded suspiciously.

I have many English cousins, Aunts and Uncles. I never met any of them in the 70's or 80's. Some of them I met for the first time at my wedding in the later 90's. Some I haven't met yet.

A lot of my aunts and Uncles would talk about how difficult it was to not be able to come back, not even to a funeral. It just wasn't considered safe.

It was a very grim time in NI. Essentially I think it was a war zone in all but name. Your mother would have been very unwise to have moved you here.

I too have experienced the "oh you're from NI you must be a terrorist" attitude in England. It's very upsetting especially when you have made a real effort to move away from that type of thinking.

My kids go to a school where all nationalities are welcome, there are some kids from England and some teachers too. As well as many from further away. It's probably not a bully free zone but it does take bullying seriously.

Pretty vile bullying for 2 straight years which fundamentally changed my whole character. I’m sorry I am not so easily going to forgive and forget.

@howdoyoudecide I am sorry that was your experience. Bullying is a very nasty form of abuse.

The population of NI didn't bully you how
The English raped, murdered and destroyed my country. They beat and tormented my family in the ROI and NI. Do I judge all English people because of this and blame them? obviously not

There is definitely still a little bit of this going on in NI Catholic grammars. I am Northern Irish and lived here for first 18 years of my life. After 10 years in England I then moved back here and did some time as a substitute teacher in a boys Catholic grammar. I had more than one comment made to me about being English and a lot of whispers behind my back that were frankly unpleasant. I am in fact from a Catholic background in the very town I was teaching in but the boys didn't know that. That experience made me rethink where I sent my son to school. He is half English and has a very English accent although an Irish name so in NI will probably stand out in either type of school.

I went to catholic girls grammar in the 90’s there were also Protestant girls there, as well as girls from different countries including but not only England. There was bullying. Absolutely. But not once did I ever hear of it being along the lines of someone being Protestant, English, Chinese or whatever. It was usually to do with someone was seen out with someone else’s boyfriend, sides were chosen and war began. Or not being good at netball

I do agree that NI is still backwards in some respects. I have heard adults (not teens or children) talk about the English or refer to a specific English person they know using their Englishness as an insult. It does exist. But really only in the older generations which is somewhat understandable given the history between England and NI.

You know it’s a comedy? As in made up and not real? Everything exaggerated, and the jokes that the wee English boy is a bit wet and wouldn’t have lasted 2 secs in the Christian Bros school? The comedy value is having him the out of place boy in a girls school. And having someone from outside react to all the Troubles nonsense in a way that the girls who take it for granted don’t. To hilight the whole madness of situation? I.e. the conflict?

mountford100 My goodness, you do realise Derry Girls is fiction, don't you? Of course a boy wouldn't be sent to an all-girls school!! Its a writing device being used to add more humour to the sitcom! BTW I know Derry well as I am married to a Derry man. For what it's worth, he received an excellent education there at an all-boys Catholic school. He had friends there who relocated from England and they did just fine -no bullying. It never ceases to amaze me how people on mumsnet discuss the Irish / Northern Irish as if they are some kind of alien race!

illustrious cross post!

It never ceases to amaze me how people on mumsnet discuss the Irish / Northern Irish as if they are some kind of alien race!

Well they were pretty much told we were for long enough!

Oh and a catholic English girl would have gone to either donomination and been fine. Because we’re not bloody savages or some alien race. Other than a bit of teasing about the accent that is but god knows i’ve Had plenty of that living in Enhland and survived...

My family moved from Scotland to NI in the 80's. I went to a Catholic girls grammar in Belfast and I wasn't bullied at all. It wasn't a very diverse school, and I was quite a novelty and I got some good-natured teasing about my accent. I loved school there. Found the whole experience of really only knowing catholics a bit stifling though.

We later moved back to Scotland and I was bullied there, ostensibly for my ever so slightly different accent.

I don't expect you can generalise from either of those experiences.

Oh and DBs got on fine at their schools (RC boys grammar and primary schools)

Donegal isn't in Northern Ireland.

It's the in the north of ireland but is part of the republic (or southern ireland)

I went to the same Quaker grammar school as mentioned above during the 80s and 90s- it has just won Sunday Times school of the year again I believe. I would say it probably would have been fine for an English Catholic- there were plenty of catholics when I was there. I certainly don’t remember it being left wing however- I still shudder at the thought of sitting though a talk from the pro life brigade in the mid ninties, including a video of abortion. I went on to study law and was horrified at the huge gaps in my knowledge of ‘the troubles’ and my very prod world view- I knew nothing about Catholic repression for example. It was a super school if you were a middle class Protestant or catholic but willing to say little about it. The treatment by some of the staff of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds was appalling and it was little wonder most left in 5th year.

I also am less than impressed with the way it has moved to super selective with the changes in the eleven plus. Whilst a good grammar when I was there, it had a range of abilities (helped by the boarding department), but now it will only take the brightest of the bright.

This is a horrible post and as far as I can see designed only to stir up hatred. I hate everything about it and the sweeping statements about NI being "small minded" and an awful place.

What's awful and small minded is your sweeping prejudice that the only bullying of children that are "different" would come from catholic schools in NI and that NI is a small minded place.

My dcs are at a catholic school in NI. It has won gold standard awards for equality and inclusivity. It is held up across the UK by Investors in People as a school to be admired. In NI, which has a miniscule population of "newcomers", it has a 20% English as a second language intake. It is a fabulous and diverse school.

Derry Girls was an extremely entertaining comedic parody of certain types of school culture many years ago. OP's post and some of the responses are a depressingly closed minded parody of a land that does not exist to most people who live here. You could pick any microcosm of England Scotland or Wales and be as blatantly goady but ignorance over NI means you won't.

Both my husband's parents are Irish but worked temporarily in England when he was born. They moved back to the Republic when he was about 4. He was also bullied terribly for being 'English'. In a village where his family had lived for at least 200 years and most of his relatives had never left!

I dunno freckle, my husband is Irish and a Republican and so are most of his friends. They still wouldn't live there for a lot of those reasons. He describes it as 'a backwards fucked up dribble of a country'.