Hi, my DD (11) is in a very small class, and has been happily settled in a friendship group of 5 - 6 kids who all got on well. But since last summer, the girl who was DD's best friend has started turning against her, being very bossy and talking down to her, and then I noticed that she was trying to force DD to buy things for her (at this stage, almost every contact that this girl had with DD outside of school seemed to centre around the girl trying to obtain something from DD - small things like Tippex, take-aways, sweets etc but it was a definite red flag to me. She actually broke DD's new Tippex and other stationery on a couple of occasions, then tried to push her into buying Tippex as she wanted it for her and another girl).
Things escalated when DD started to say no to these demands, then this girl encouraged the other girls to ignore DD, whispering about her so she would overhear, and making a big thing out of turning their backs on her and forming a 'circle of friends' without her. It came to a head when they lured DD into a game that resulted in her falling, and we brought the matter to the school. We spoke to all the parents of the children involved, and to be fair they all took it seriously (with the exception of the parents of the girl who was behind the whole thing - they refused to believe that their daughter had any involvement in it, and tried to blame another child whose parents just so happened not to be in their parental circle of friends.) At this stage we hadn't actually individually named their child as being behind the whole thing, as we wanted to try to resolve the situation without placing blame directly on her. But they showed absolutely no sign of being concerned that this was happening to DD, they were only interesting in exonerating their daughter.
Unfortunately for DD, this girl's parents are very friendly with some of the other parents involved, and even though they have made it clear to me (without actually using the girl's name) that they know who the ringleader is, they clearly don't want to upset the parents of this girl so their children are being left to blindly follow her instructions. DD is a very happy and bubbly child, but is very shy when it comes to confrontation, and she gets this from me I'm ashamed to say. My instinct as a parent is to tell her to stay well clear of the group, and play with some of the children in the younger classes. But I can see that DD is miserable about feeling isolated from her group of friends, and since this is her last year in primary school it may be better for her in the long run if she is able to do something to stand up to this girl and hold on to some type of friendship with the other girls. I'm at a loss as to how to advise her to deal with this, given that she's not a confrontational kid and I would have struggled to deal with this situation myself as a child. Some thoughts on how to guide her on this would be very much appreciated.