Birthday Invites

[IrisAnon]

Hi, Y6 DS's school is a very cliquey school-gate situation for me (it's known by many others for being like this). The kind where if you aren't prepared to visibly suck up to three or four individuals, you aren't really included in anything. Even the children's birthday parties in this school year seem to be small and select, rather than inviting a class or large group of friends (I've had another DC go through this school and their year was nothing like this).
However, DS gets on with all the children in his class and he has a BD party coming up. I don't want to limit his attendees based on my refusal to engage in cliques, so should I email all of the class parents and risk a few people dropping out because I'm not 'sociable' or be a little more sneaky and send paper invites to be handed out to the class FOLLOWED by an email?!
AIBU? Are paper invites at this age naff and does it look like blatant subterfuge to let their DCs know about the party first? We don't have a lot of birthday parties and this is going to be a really lovely one - I don't want it to be spoilt by school gate-ry.

We always had small select parties as they got older so did everyone else

Either way it’s your choice - hand out paper ones and let them all come

I think you should let your child invite anyone that they would like via paper invite. I'm not sure an email needs to be sent ag all? Just put an RSVP telephone number for yourself on the invite and let the children do the leg work.
It sounds like these parents are not going to cope well when their children start secondary school and they can't control social circles as easily!

Sorry if I wasn't clear - we're going to invite all of his class, not a select few as we thought it fairest way to do it.

We had small parties in year 6 too. The DC simply gave out invitations to their friends. I suspect you are over thinking.

Can't the kid just invite who he wants? Can probably just text his mates

If you're inviting everyone paper invites are fine. In that case I'm sure DD will chat with the other kids about her party anyway and hopefully they'll nag their parents into taking them. You can always chase up RSVP's by email when the date approaches. In Y6 surely drop and run is fine so the cliquey mums can always slope off to a coffee shop surely?

It's quite unusual to have full class parties at that age. More usual to just have a few closer friends. Just send paper invitations. Why would you even have email addresses for everyone?

Won’t your DS be telling all his classmates verbally by now? Just send the email.

I actually don't think whole class parties are unheard of at that age. I have a few nephews/nieces and one of them says inviting the whole class to a disco type party is quite common the other does small group outings.

I have email addresses from the class list.
Thanks for the advice and I hope I'm just being overly nervous. It's such a cliquey year - I don't want to have children not come along because some of the other Mums think I don't join in the school gate enough. It really does seem this judgemental at times. Crazy, I know.

Class lists aren't something we have here. Our schools wouldn't even give a list of kids names out never mind email addresses

Does he want to invite the whole class? By that age, mine just told he who they wanted. Past year 1, not many did whole class parties.

At DC's school the PTA send out contact lists for all the parents (you have to give permission for your details to be included). In order to get an RSVP for a birthday party you usually need to send out paper invites (this bit is optional and you should assume will be lost or forgotten in the bottom of the book bag) then send out emails/whatsapp then send out a reminder email/whatsapp a little later.

Yes, he'd love the whole class to come as it is an outdoor party, so it's not just my choice.