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?

Heard a story the other night about a 15 year old female's birthday party. Guests were all students at an independent school - boys and girls on twin sites - a few miles away from my place. Parents an academic and lawyer respectively, who were in the house while the party was taking place. One of the region's leafiest roads where the houses fetch over half a million quid.

The police got called after a phone call was made saying that a serious sexual assault had taken place. Party then closed down as entire house a crime scene. Birthday girl's handbag searched and she was found to be in possession of Class A drugs.

I mean you wouldn't want your kids mixing with teenagers like that, would you?

I can believe that,frau.

The amount of 'free house'Parties in big posh houses my DS was invited to over the summer.

I expect there is a mixture of different types of parents at your DC's school and you will probably find that out when you get to know them better. My DC's go to a school in a deprived area. Our family is a bit weird because we both have degrees but DH doesn't earn that much (a bit above NMW but not much and the tax credits are the same as his salary). DS1, DS3 and DH have a posh accent, DS2 and I don't.

When DS1 started school I thought it was like take a break magazine had come to life lol but now I know some of the parents better it's like any school. Some parents I get on with, some I don't. Some of them seem rough on the outside but are there for you in a crisis. When DS4 was in NICU parents I didn't know were coming up to me and saying "how's the baby?" It was really lovely.

I once heard a story about one of the richest couples in England having a mummified baby in their house. Wait, wait. I heard a story about a king and a poker...

It's ok to slag off the plebs though.

Just don't diss the nice MC kids.

The problem with commoners is, well, they're common. But there's only one king and poker story.

I guess if every horrible commoner did something different then they'd be celebrated after their own fashion.

Don't worry. I live in central Vietnam where the average salary is $150. Vietnam came 17th in pisa, ahead of the UK and many other countries. People are industrious and hard working, yet plenty are "deprived".

hellokittymania, I'm sorry to say that I think this conversation has very little to do with deprivation and much more to do with who is best at throwing cultural insults at anyone else based on stereotypes.

I think all of us would be ashamed to be compared with people who are genuinely underprivileged in global terms. We are just being stupid in an Internet forum.

If you want real conversation it's probably better to start a new thread. But if you're happy to beat us with your better Pisa results, then stay here! You're very welcome

(and equally stupid.)

Or you could just stay here and throw general insults around.

Like calling people stupid...

I'd do anything for a big mac...

*CalamitouslyWrong:
Threads like this bring out the confessional worst in people and suddenly it becomes ok to say things like 'well, no right thinking person would want their children to go to school with nasty poor people's children' or 'well of course everyone judges you on what you name your child/how you dress/your accent/whatever else proxy for class you want to use; it's only natural'. Decent people would reflect on the fact they had been a judgemental arse and tell themselves not to in future, but threads like this seem to be where other people can gather and reinforce/make excuses for their prejudices. *

Not, it is not a prejudice, it is the real status quo. I am a foreigner and came to this country with a completely open mind, as the society back home really is nothing like the society here. We do not have classes as you know them, chavs or stuck-up MC etc. But during the time I have lived here, nearly 15 years, I had a chance to form my own opinion about the way the society works here.

Yes, I do think that in this country it matters hugely where you come from, what accent you speak with, and whether your parents wear pijamas for a school run or not. I had the pleasure (not) to live in a deprived area of a big city for 6 years, it is nothing like what I have experienced previously. And what people can "prejudice" on here, I would call my very real life experience: swearing, pijamas at noon, fags on the doorstep, violent dogs, lack of aspiration and common manners. This is a deprived "underclass" environment. It is not the same as WC who are not aflash with cash by any means, but they actually do work and make an effort bringing their children up. Saying people are poor is NOT saying they are underclass, there are plenty of working respectable poor people. But those are not the kind who do not bother to throw a pair of jeans on to take their child to school. Nobody on this thread minds having a plumber's son or hairdresser's daughter sitting next to their child, as long as they are willing to learn and have some respect. Is it too much to expect?

I really cannot see why people would try and find an excuse for the behaviour OP describes. It is almost as if it has got a place in the society and is quite all right. Hurling abuse at each other in school playground, really, what is so bad about that?

You are the one with the problem if you don't like it.

Sockreturningpixie Wed 11-Dec-13 18:43:52
When you think about it schools with very high % of kids on FSM get more funding than the ones that don't the learning support tends to be better as does behaviour management (due to having more support staff).
Following this logic, my old deprived street should have been 4 times as clean compared to my present MC street, as the street cleaners used to come every Thursday and clean it spotless, every single week. Here I have not seen a street cleaner in all the years I have lived here.

I do not suppose I need to say the obvious which neighbourhood was run down and disgustingly dirty despite the money and resources poured into it.

I think you may have taken on the prejudices in British society and made them your own.

I don't think anyone has said that parents having fights in the school playground is a good thing. Some people are antisocial and not very nice in all areas and in all income groups. The problem is that people (including you) are generalising that kind of behaviour to poorer people but viewing it as some sort of isolated aberration when you find it in more affluent people.

What their parents wore when they dropped them off at school, doesn't actually have any bearing on whether the child sitting next to yours in class will behave. I went it a seriously MC school and some of the other children were awful. It absolutely wasn't the case that it was the 'bad' scheme kids and the nice children with solicitor and accountant parents who lived in mansions. The girl who beat me up on the way to the buses one day had professional parents; their daughter was still a thug. But her being not very nice at all wasn't because of her class or whatever; it was because she wasn't a very nice person.

It is prejudice to assume that people are bad people because they don't share your sense of aesthetics (which are always class ridden). Having a staffie and neck tattoos doesn't make someone 'underclass scum'. You get smokers of all classes, so smoking on the doorstep simply means that they're not doing it in the house (and probably don't have a more private outdoor space to use).

There is no way in the universe that all the parents in the school were shouting, swearing and fighting at the school gate. The OP has general used the behaviour of a minority (and it will be a minority) to the entire school population. She seems to think that she, and her son, is somehow different to (and better than) everyone else.

I do not think anybody on here said ALL and EVERYBODY. People are just saying there is a higher risk, it is more likely that... There is a difference. I have a lot of respect for poor people who do a good job of bringing their kids up in very difficult circumstances. But I would very much doubt, these would be the ones displaying the behaviour OP is worried about.

There is a difference of having half of your kid's class who come from disadvantaged families and bring disfunctional behaviour into the classroom with them, and a few of those in the classroom with the majority being reasonably well-behaved. In my DS's MC school there is one problem child in class, and it is staggering the amount of time the teacher has to waste on him to bring him into line before the rest of the class can actually start learning. Funny enough, this child supports my "prejudice" coming from a disfunctional non-working family, out of area. The rest of the children misbehave occasionally, but they do not go beyond the usual "messing about" one would expect at their age (NOT spitting at other folks, throwing drinks at them, treading their lunch on the floor etc. etc).

I would not want to imagine what my child's learning would be like in a class with 10 or more disruptive children. And, yes they tend to be from deprived disadvantaged homes, they are so ill-behaved because nobody takes the trouble to bring them up, feed them a proper meal and put them to bed at a reasonable time. Why should my child's learning suffer because some parents cannot be a* to do their job properly?

I just wanted to add that I would be just as reluctant to send my child to a rich spoilt kid private school, as a deprived council-estate school. I well believe in Class A drug parties, snobbery and rotten attitude cited on here. It is more about respect and manners for me, and wanting to learn. None of this costs any money.

But you still don't seem to see that you are simply generalising based on class. In both directions!

You notice that the child you perceive as a problem in your daughter's class is the poor one from out of area. That reinforces your assumptions about poor people. It doesn't make it so that poor people are more likely to be disruptive in class. Nor does being at private school mean that children will be arrogant drug users.

Even a statistical relationship between disruptive behaviour (and please remember that all you have is anecdotes) and family income does not mean that poor people have worse behaviour. The most likely reason for the apparent relationship is that people with problems are more likely to be poor because the issues in their life make it more difficult to hold down a job etc. And that doesn't mean that all poor people are dysfunctional, in the same way that a statistic about the likelihood of you disliking Brussels sprouts doesn't mean that you can't enjoy them. That's not how statistics works.

The problem here is a poor grasp of statistics combined with moralising discourse.

I never said that poor people are all disfunctional, nobody in their right mind would arrive at that. Whatever the causes, there is a higher likelihood of disruptive behaviour from children coming from disfunctional underclass families (who often have violent dogs, spend their day in pijamas, as they do not work, and swear at their kids). My point was the OP is rightly worried about that. I am amazed other posters are trying very hard to make out this problem does not exist.

Well, it was real enough for me to move.

yes, i do think it is a waste of teacher's and other pupil's time trying to get a disruptive pupil to sit still and pay attention. Do you think otherwise?

well there should be a classroom assistant surely?
surely it is not 'wasting time' as far as that 'problem child' is concerned?
or should the school's efforts just be for the benefit of 'nice' children - perhaps they should put the 'problem' child in some special school?
is that what they do in your country?

He won't go to the secondary there will he? Primary is mostly irrelevant imvho.

Has he friends from other places?

I went to a school with kids from sink estates, 3rd generation unemployed etc/ prison, / drug use/ teen pregnancy etc, and made very few friends there as I had nothing in common with them. The teachers were very supportive of me: I was academic, most of the other students were not. The facilities were fabulous, and I had lots of friends from extra school activities and sports teams I was on.
I don't think my school made much difference to me in the end. The teachers were great.
We all move on in the end and leave school, and if your DS likes it, and his academic ability is being stretched, it's a good school for him if he's happy.

Make sure he has friends outside school as well: academic ambition usually comes from home anyway.

Oh I see this thread's moved on a bit (5 pages!) and OP has left.....

I think it's good to have a mix of abilities in a classroom, because that's what the world is like. It's a good lesson to learn how to just get on with your work. Stay focused on what you're doing, and let others do likewise.

I appreciated Preciousbane 's comment while I can associate with op's concern. My dcs go to a school that is in a reasonably middle class area. Parents at school gates are reasonably well dressed and well spoken on the whole. Other than that are they necessary better people? So ok the school is above average in the league table. But but but more of the kids have extra support and private tuitions outside school. As we moved house so want to move dc2 to a more local school. According to Ofsted report the local school is a good school. However numbers of FSM and SEN are above average other than that it does seem a nice school and has more TAs employed. It is not so good with the sat results. Does it just mean that the children are not getting so much outside school supports? Therefore the sat results represent more to the true of the kids and the school real abilities? I struggle to decide whether to move my dc to the local school or just stay put but pay for extra support to keep up.

I myself come from a very low income working class background my dad was a alcoholic although always had an income and my mum was disabled. However my brother is a well qualified engineer and travels between several countries on business trips all the time and I did my HE through evening courses. So we turned out ok.

However I now can afford to have a choice for my own dcs. I want to provide my dcs a better environment to grow up in. But is the more middle class school necessary mean better environment? I keep asking myself over again and again what sort of qualities should a good school have?

It is not a matter of being snobbish. It just most parents want to do the best for their children regardless their circumstances.