Details changed as outing.
So DD (3) attends the preschool attached to a London pre-prep. She's been at the daycare there since babyhood, which is small but very nurturing. The other year groups at the school daycare are tiny, but the preschool year group (age 3-4) is much bigger, as lots of children join to get a guaranteed place in Reception.
We liked this school because it is a melting pot of children of many different cultures, and we thought it would be good for DD to grow up mixing with a culturally diverse range of children. This mix of children has been the case in all the years before preschool, and DD was very settled and, according to the teachers, popular and well liked by her peers.
This preschool year, there has been a large influx of children from just one culture. This would be fine, but these new families stick together and don't seem interested in mixing with the rest of us. Offers of playdates are ignored, and they don't seem to throw birthday parties, or bring their children to the ones that other parents throw. In the queue at drop off you can try and talk to them, but they either ignore you or the nicer ones make vague small talk until another parent of their background arrives, at which point they end the conversation and talk to the other parent of their background.
DD has gone from loving 'school', to regularly claiming to be 'sick' to avoid going. Apparently the new girls from this background run away from her as they only play together, and two of the new boys have been bullying her, pinching and shoving her and calling her insults when the staff's backs are turned.
The problem is, this is her cohort now, so, unless lots of children leave, she will be in this peer group for her entire time at the school. The proportion of children from the original daycare is very small, there are maybe 4 other girls that were here originally, and it seems unreasonable to expect that these girls will all get along and always play together until year 6. DD is an outgoing, sociable tomboy, whereas the majority of the new children seem to come from families that value traditional values about how boys and girls ought to be (i.e: manly boys, quiet, demure girls).
On an unrelated note, enough of the new children (I don't know if it's children from this group, or the few that aren't, or a mix) have quite disruptive behaviour that the preschool key workers complain that they now spends a lot of time 'fire-fighting' children who don't get on, and children keep breaking the preschool equipment.
AIBU to think it's time to move? I really love the school, but just can't see this ending well