To think it’s hard for a middle class child to attend a working class school?

[emoliant]

I mean a predominantly working class state school in a deprived area like an ex mining town. Where the child is one of the only middle class ones and gets bullied for being different or posh.

Then the Op needs advice about getting the school to address the bullying ,not endless stories about how terrible WC kids are.

My understanding is that bullying is something state schools mainly ignore. Please address this asap and move if necessary. This is terrible for the child and affects their future. Hopefully you have options.

Maybe you should write your own article. Just make it up if you don’t know what to write.

This

I grew up in a very disadvantaged area and went to a school full of very poor kids. But there were a handful of middle class kids in the school, from the nearby villages whose parents could not afford to send them to a private school.
The most popular boy in my year came from a fairly well off middle class family. He was handsome, sociable and witty.

Kids get bullied for anything, the slightest difference will be picked on. I was horrifically bullied for being quiet, it wasn't just physical bullying, although that was bad, including being pushed down a full flight of stairs, having my nose broken, being punched so hard my lip had to be stitched, it was the psychological bullying that was the worst. No wonder I have been treated since I was 17 for anxiety & depression. I was diagnosed with autism age 53 & that explained why I never felt I fitted in but didn't excuse the bullying.

Depends how stuck up the parents are - whether they express they're clear distaste of working class classmates

I'd expect anyone who considers their family to be middle class to ensure their middle class children are educated alongside other middle class children. Particularly so if their children are not robust enough to deal with the poors, and/or believe themselves, via their parents' teachings/attitude, to be naturally superior to the poors.

Surely when middle class parents are unable to secure middle class education for their middle class children, they can no longer self-define as middle class? In reality, they are merely "upper class" poors, exercising delusions of being middle class.

What I have learned from this site is middle class people who overextend themselves financially to keep up with their middle class neighbours frequently look to their own middle class parents to pay for the education of their middle class grandchildren.

Perhaps that's the solution in this case? Beg or bully the middle class grandparents into stumping up the necessary fees?

One caution, though, ensure you calculate the amount of cash you're bullying/begging from the middle class grandparents includes enough to cover the VAT just in case when Labour return to power. 👍

Yes, it is quite likely to be difficult.

I’m “working class” and got bullied at school for being “posh”

I was posh according to the children because me and my parents were from a French speaking country - and my parents barely spoke English (now they do) so as a kid I had to learn a majority of the lanaguge at school.

My point is that it’s more about how the children perceive you and kids really arnt classist. Not really in primary school - I found you couldn’t really tell a huge difference between the children.

However when you join things like the PTA etc then the divide comes in and it’s more about the parents.

At the school I went to you would have been beaten up nightly for being posh. But equally the bullies looked for any excuse - wrong shoes, wrong expression, wrong time.

My dds went to a school in the same town but there was a mix of kids so some were poor some rich. There was bullying but it wasn't specific to income

It’s rather harsh to victim blame the bullied kids by saying the reason they are bullied is their fault for being “superior”! Most in this position are keeping an extremely low profile but commit the crimes of not having a local accent/ not pissing about in class / wanting to succeed at school/ doing well in tests. That made you posh in my day. It was fine though at my school as there were just enough of us who were like this to stick together.

@TheaBrandt to be clear, my reference to middle class kids being superior was regarding their (potential) attitude of superiority, not that they are (actually or automatically) superior, in any way, to anyone else because their parents identify as middle class. 😂

Anyway, as you said it yourself - 'most' middle class kids being forced to be educated alongside the (uniformly uncouth and feral) poors would keep as low a profile as possible. Basically, doing precisely what any kid with any characteristic or feature that would be red meat to bullies would do if they had any sense.

My point is those without any sense/awareness of others will happily share their inbred air of superiority and make themselves, seemingly willing, red meat bedecked targets.

A bit like Will McKenzie.

Gosh, there’s some serious virtue signalling on this thread. Kids can be very cruel about perceived differences. I had a rough time in early secondary school because I was deemed ‘posh’ by my peers. My family actually had a very modest income and home but in comparison to the majority of kids who lived in council flats and houses I appeared well off. I also did not speak with the local accent which was a huge black mark against me. I never thought I was better than them in any way but my existence really got their back up.

Of course when I got to uni and was surrounded by truly middle class people I wasn’t good enough then either!

Well said.

Being different from the norm in any environment can be difficult. And people who say kids don't notice difference have, I assume, never met a child.

I would say it depends on the accents and how different they are. Accents is what will always be noticeable.

Some lovely victim blaming on this thread.

I was a middle class child that was picked on at my working class primary (not a particularly deprived area but not posh either). Of course I wasn’t going around thinking I was better than everyone else, at 7 I didn’t have any idea about social class. And being middle class wasn’t about having better stuff than everyone else, it was about having the wrong stuff- the wrong accent, Clothkits clothes instead of what the bullies called ‘fashionable’ clothes, not having local family. One girl would sometimes bring me handmedowns because she felt sorry for me and I was so thrilled to be able to look like everyone else 😂

The teachers loved me and I used to come top in most things which made it worse, I remember one teacher yacking on to the class about how she wished she had a whole class of me because I worked so hard, and I was sitting there mortified thinking ‘please stop’ because even with my limited social skills I knew this would make it worse.

I was friends with the misfits who were also outcasts for whatever reason including proper deprivation, one girl was called fleabag because she was always messy, I think her mum had left, one girl was a victim of childhood sexual abuse though we didn’t know that at the time.
In my 4th year things were better because I and one of the most popular girls in the class passed the 11+ and we became friends.

I will never forget my first day at grammar school, the sheer joy of discovering I fitted in, that I would have friends, that I wasn’t different or wrong.

Anyway guess who got picked on at grammar school, that’s right the popular girl from primary. I didn’t even twig at the time that it was class based because it was nominally about other things that were a proxy for class like her wearing too much makeup or having a perm, but looking back it is perfectly obvious what was going on. We talked about it later and it was clear we had very different memories of school, my perception of my secondary was that there was hardly any bullying, she remembered it as stuck up and snobby. It’s amazingly easy to be oblivious when you’re not the target. (The other person in our class who was picked on was the sole Asian girl so I suspect you can add racist to snobby.)

I am in touch with a few people from primary and generally life has not been kind to the ones who were victims there for reasons of deprivation (my friend who went to grammar school with me switched to college for sixth form and did fine) while yes generally if you’re bullied for talking too posh this is not something that exacerbates existing struggles in the same way. It doesn’t make it ok to dismiss though and the ridiculous idea that if you are bullied for being posh you must have brought it on yourself either by showing off or by being weak and therefore pretty much deserve it just sounds like the sort of thing the bullies would use to justify being vile.

It can be hard for them to be different to the norm, but they may still end up with more opportunities and have more support at home. I think the worst situation to be in in a rough school is to be poor and different in some way. Because then you don't have the protections of being from an well educated and/or affluent family either, you're bottom of the heap in every way. The middle class (ish) kids I know who went to state schools did better than the other kids who were bullied in school, but didn't have the resources for therapy, extra curriculars, support to get to university, etc. there was no buffer

This was DS and exactly the same scenario except we are also Southerner's and he is mixed race, Chinese and English.

He did get a bit of you are so posh and a bit of racism. We talked about it, he is very good at sport and honestly that reason meant it was all over pretty quickly. I may get lambasted a bit but when he came home from school the first time and relayed the teasing especially the ‘talk China for me’ I told him he could be secure in the knowledge that those kids would never have much money or anything more than a basic life with small minds.

I was brought up in a working class area of the North West that has a very strong and distinctive accent. Anyone talking “posh” would have been at least teased. Children tend to pick on any perceived differences. The people saying it must be hard to mix with the plebs are being a bit naive.

I work in a working class school. Noone cares if anyone is 'posh'. It's nothing to do with your child being middle class 🙄

Hopefully it’s better now My teens at a girls state school not aware of this issue they all seem to rub along pretty well irrespective of accent / parental income.

Dd 2 has incredibly eclectic friends from the two extreme ends of the social scale which I really like.

Looking back now mine coming to the end of their schooling any issues with other kids it’s not been WC kids that have ever been the problem for mine.