School friends from deprived families

[poppytin]

DS1 just started reception in September. We didn’t get our first choice of school which could be seen from our house due to oversubscription and sibling rule. DS1 now goes to second choice school which is in a more deprived area although the school has performed rather well and been improving. We’re 7th on the waiting list for first choice school which has very low turnover so chances of getting in are pretty slim. I have no issue with the school as given its circumstances ie high FSM and SEN its performance is very good. However I can’t seem to make myself like the families of the children there. At the school gate I’ve met people in their pyjamas, with cigarettes on their fingers, piercings on etc. I’ve seen people shouting/swearing at each other in the playground while waiting for their children. DS was invited to a birthday party of one of the boys in his class and it was the worst house I’ve ever set foot in. Mom was in nightie with a cig on when we arrived at mid day. DS1 appears to be academic, loves reading and writing, both DH and I have masters from redbrick units and are in professional jobs, our house is walled with books and CDs.

DS loves his school and teachers which is the main reason I’m using to calm me down. However I worry whether the environment where his friends grow in would have an impact on him and his education.

Any opinions?

I apologise if my post sounded like reversed snobbery, but the first time my ds1 attended one of the schools I mentioned above, I received a lesson in not judging a book by its cover and it became quite a turning point in my life tbh.
For all the problems the community faced the dc were well supported by the parents and the school didn't tolerate any of the issues discussed above, definitely no smoking, drinking, foul language on the premises. But nobody would have done this anyway.

As it is, they just made it someone else's Problem.

^^
Or it was a wake up call for the kid (and his parents). Who knows?

I personally don't care at all if my dc plays with kids who come from a 'fancy', 'poor' or 'bog standard' family. But I have little tolerance for bad manners, narrow mindedness (not a prerogative of the mc, I'm afraid) or arrogance. There are idiotic people in all socio economic groups.

I guess I am a snob but a strange one in that I prefer and seek out people who are genuine and not too self obsessed.

Why do people brag about being a snob.

Looking down on other people is not a character trait I would be proud of.

I wouldn't tolerate it from my children either.

Usual, t'is was meant as a slightly sarcastic comment. Never mind.

I can't spell either .
[Wanders off to a less tricky thread]

Ah,sorry.

Whoosh

Not got time to read 14 pages but don't think private school is a solution either.

DD is at a private. We have parents with tatoos and piercings, familes with social workers, parents with drinking problems, familes who live in tiny flats. Some of the live in million pound houses with huge incomes and degrees from red brick universities or even Oxbridge.

I went to school in a very deprived area. I learnt what a blow job was when I was 9 (walked in on 2 11 year olds in the changing room). I sat next to kids who couldn't read at 15 or 16. I had friends with parents in prison.

I also got a degree from a Russell Group university and have a great job I love.

Focus on you child and what they can do and calm down about the rest. They will get some great (and maybe some not so great) life experience.

I don't think there's much evidence that clever children are necessarily challenged in school. Everything depends on everything else. But today, with the Internet, there is nothing like the need to rely on crap schoolteachers and crap parents that there once was. Today you can get demonstrations and explanations straight from the computer in ways which were unimaginable a few years ago. I don't know how useful that is in primary school. But hopefully it'll mean that fewer secondary school pupils are left not being able to understand this lesson or that answer, because today you can simply download it and listen again as many times as you like. (Often you can log into things and discuss the topic too.)

I don't believe the nighty/ fag bit from the op. The rest? Yeah, I reasonate.

I moved my dc in y3. Before that, the school was good, they were doing their best, teaching was good but the social side was awful. No parties for children, ever in my dc class. The parents language was so awful I often had to " pause" our journey on the way to schoolso ds didn't see his classmate (4yo) being called a " fuckin little shite" and watch the mother bang his head against a wall( I called ss about this one but they were not interested). Smoking parents in pyjamas were the norm, lots of them with violent dog types on leads. There was a riot at the Xmas concert because the children sang " Felix navidad" (sp!) because it was " foreign Shite!)

There wasn't anyone " like us" at the school at all. If we hadn't moved when we had, my child would have been negatively effected.

I feel like this thread is full of mc parents commenting on situations they have no actual experience of.

Hold up a minute, you saw his mother bang a 4yo's head against a wall?

You called SS??? Think you should have called the police to be honest....

Can I just throw into this thread that manners, morals and education have nothing to do with how rich you are.

I say that as a teacher who works in one if the most deprived areas of east London. One of my most memorable moments was learning that a year 6 pupil, with perfect manners, immaculately turned out, first with homework and level 5 across the board lived in a one bed flat with 4 siblings and her parents. They had 2 double beds pushed together and all slept like that. My jaw hit the floor when her mum told me that...I asked her how on earth she managed to organise everyone and keep on top of it with do little room and resources. She was an amazing mum with amazing kids.
Those people here judging books by covers should be ashamed of themselves to be honest.

This same mother slapped her child across the face in the classroom and nothing was done.

When I phoned they said the family was " known" to them. I don't have much faith in ss tbh.

Riot at the Xmas play because of foreign shit?
Where on earth did you live?

I do live in a deprived area,so actually I do live it and have never ever in all my kids years at school Seen anything like you describe.

Do you think parents hitting children only happens in rough areas?

Not read the thread but ops description of the "mom in nightie with a fag on" reminded me of Lily Savage...

I could just imagine Lil there greeting our delicate op who has been in a unit.

Having said that...money or no, sympatico with ones peers is good. As others have said its no fun being a fish out of water anywhere and if your peers are not on your wave length it can be awful.

Yeah...and thank goodness I'm not in op's wavelength...

How awful Winterclause. I hope someone was able to help that poor child.

If the police had been called they would have done something surely. If the school staff saw it they would have been legally bound to report it immediately as a child protection matter.

I grew up abroad - a child from a single parent family with a mother who was an alcoholic. We didn't have much money but I was studious type and decided to move at the age of 19 to the UK. I have managed to work full-time and complete two degrees (one of them from a Russell Group university). Never really thought much about living in a deprived area, my justification was that the mortgage is low etc. What mattered to me was that we were happy here and we met some lovely people. When our only DD started school I was really dissapointed not by the other parents but by the state of the public education. After three years, I have decided to take out our DD from a state school which is similar to OP and she will be transferring to a private school. Where I grew up, it did not matter what your parents did as children had same access to education and hence the same chances in life. I am afraid, I don't believe for one minute that this is the situation in the UK and it breaks my heart. I am not talking about the parents themselves, I mean the expectations teachers themselves have from children in deprived areas. It does make me very angry indeed. One of the arguments which make my blood boil is (and I hear that from many friends who are teachers) that it is up to family and how much time parents invest in their children. I have to disagree on this. However, when the majority of children come from a difficult background, and school doesn't provide required support, I don't think it does any good for my (or OPs) daughter.

Rather mums in pyjamas than the fashion police posse at the school gate, in their Ugg boots and full make up.Or designer track suits on the way to the gym after dropping off dc.

The OP probably called Social Services rather than the police because she thought Social services would act on it. Before reading this thread I would have thought that too. I'm shocked that they didn't and can only hope that the little boy has been saved from that treatment by now.