Where are all the WHITE kids gone?????

[drosophila]

I live in a multicultural area in London where maybe 50% of the people are white. Our local school is mainly non-white. In DS's class there is about 5 white children and about 21 non-white children.

The school has a good rep and twice was in the OFSTED top 300 schools in the country. Why do you think it's not representative of the neighbourhood. The other schools around have very strict catchment areas so I don't know where they go to school.

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I always hate the assumption that is perpetuated by the media and politicians that if a school has a predominantly non-white intake, then it is likely to be underperforming. IMO, this is probably what influences many white parents who choose not to send their children to schools which have too many ethnics.

My DTS are mixed race (white/black) and attend a nursery with predominantly white children and at 3yo, there has never been a issue about race. I hope this continues when they go to school but in my heart, I know this is not likely to be the case.

In the local paper recently, there was a problem with gangs at one of the secondary schools, and lo and behold, the white parents blamed the black kids who come from another London borough which happens to be more deprived socially and economically. The fact that the school had suspended two white boys for violent conduct seemed to have passed them by.

Lots of white families going private in this part of very diverse London. When my DS started at his pre-prep (5+ years ago) he was the only non-white child in his class.

The local paper has pictures of the local state schools reception classes - all the photos show classes 85 - 100% non-white.

I went to a London secondary which was roughly a third black, third white (m/c & w/c), third Asian (mostly Hindu), and ppl genuinely got on with everybody else.

In fact, when we had a new History teacher who was convinced the place was a hotbed of racism and patronised the class in his teaching (every topic came back to race), 2 of the brightest and naughtiest lads in the class would accuse one another some racial insult and highjack the lesson no one wanted, while the teacher 'counselled' the offender!

Today the school's population is mostly Asian. This is because as the school became increasingly successful its catchment area decreased which excluded most of the black pupils, a new Jewish school opened which took most of the m/c white and the bigger houses surrounding the school are now increasingly owned by Asian families.

Well my poor babe is one of a very few black children in her school.

What do I think about this........ hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..... no.... I don't think I do hugely. I know that my children will succeed because they are my children. Besides.... I've been the black girl in the white school and I've seen the surprise that I succeeded there.

Spokette.........come join us on the d'y ever threads. I have mixed DTs that are 3. Couple of scary triplet mums there, one even pregnant with twins (triplet mum that is).

I've got no answers, but two observations.

My bil and sil live in Yorkshire, and they have gone private rather than send their dds to their incredibly high achieving local secondary school because it is mostly Asian children who go there. They say "We want them to go to a high achieving school" "Well. look at x school's results"say I."But it's nearly all Asian and Asian children pull standards down"theysay. It is a very strange form of societal blindness - they can't accept the fact that a school can be high achieving AND mostly Asian, despite the facts of GCSE results and Ofsted.

My second point. I do think (sorry can't remember who) had a point when she said that perhaps it was class based. My ds goes and dd went to a very mixed local primary school. In Reception they mixed with everyone. By year 2, they both had a close circle of middle class friends of all races and colours. It was the class than seemed to be the determining factor rather than the race. And despite my wishy washy liberal attempts to make them more socially inclusive.....!

Heated, do you live near me? Sounds like what's happened in our area...

This thread is really interesting - today we have put our dd's name down for a local independant nursery/prep school. We've done this because it's the nearest RC school to us and I have this mad idea that my children should walk to school - the nearest state RC primary is a long bus-ride away and has no nursery provision. We are RC ourselves, but the independant school is 'accepting of all faiths'.

When we were being shown around, we could not help but notice that the classes were predominantly non-white, in fact in the Reception class there were no white faces at all.

But then our area is not a white one - it used to be, it used to be a 50% white/Jewish, 30% black and 20% asian but in the last 20 years we've lived here, the white population has either retired to nursing homes or moved out to the leafy suburbs(we're a Greater London borough) and it seems to be mainly asians who have bought their houses, so now I'd say it was 20/30/50.

I'm not worried per se that dd might be the only white child in her class - at her current nursery she's the only white child in her room and she has lots of friends - but I am mildly concerned about friendships during/after school - at present she gets invites to birthday parties from nursery but no playdates - I've tried arranging them, but the other mothers don't seem interested.

It could just be my bad luck iwth that bunch of mothers, but my SIL (who is a bit of a Daily Mail reader) is insistent that 'asians don't mix' (her words) and wouldn't send her dd to the local, excellent state school which is 90% asian for that reason, instead sending her to a school with pretty dreadful results that is largely white, because she wants her to 'socialise' and honestly believes she won't if her classmates were asian. Now, whilst that is OBVIOUSLY a sweeping generalisation, it does niggle at me a little...

i would disagree with your SIL, from my experience of DS going to nursery, there are lots of non white kids at DS's nursery, but children and parents mix fine. i think the non mixing aspect is down to more than skin colour and affects everyone regardless of colour- class, language barriers, religion, culture, general personalities (some folks just don't like mixing or are shy) and don't forget those who work (me being one of them) i won't be hanging around at the school gates that often to strike up friendships, which is a shame, and it's certainly knocked the playdates on the head. i've seen threads on here where large groups of mums of the same culture seem to be hard to penetrate, which is a shame for them and the posters so i'm not denying it doesn't happen, but the threads i read were anecdotal and the posters didn't imply they think this is the same for all asian families.