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?

Amberleaf i dont know why u r singling me out. Im lucky my children are at a lovely school where all the parents have high expectations for their children. As a btoke single parents there are times when i would have felt less judged, if my children were at a less comfortably middle class school. But the various well-attended pta fund raisers benefit the school enormously, so i suck up snobbery from the other mums for my children's sakes.

I know i am not a snob. Say what you like to me, children at nice middle class small schools are getting a bit of a head start. Their readimg

I got hardly any books in my house (I hate them so their banned) and I did an OU degree late in life.

Somehow DD managed to get in a very top performing school of competitive tutored since born children and yet, she's on the G&T register without books or tutoring (except for long hours on CBeebies where she learned all about diabetes amongst other things).

I don't think schools are all that tbh.......

Kids come in all sorts and even a naice school can have horrid classes.

And yes her all white stepford wives school is fairly depressing when you grew up in the vibrant and never boring East London (with drug gangs shooting each other every weekend)

I can live witj being imsulted onumsnet by somebody who gets a kick out of making a dig., but i couldnt live with throwing my children in to school like op desvribesand just hoping for the best.

Yes yodiggity + another 1

'I would rather their friends had ambition. If my childrens friends dont have ambition it will be normal in their 'sphere'.'

Why wouldn't your children have ambition? Why wouldn't the other children have ambition?

I don't geddit. Being deprived is often linked to feelings of helplessness and hard choices that others could not possibly understand that can affect education.

But ultimately, all kids want to have their own money, their own place and in my area it seems to be the kids of the less deprived that have their kids still hanging about at home way into their 20's and 30's not the ones from the poorer backgrounds.

What do you MEAN by ambition? Greed? Competition?

I don't think the OP's post is entirely unreasonable. I think the school is a bit of an unknown and where we have information voids we sometimes pour our worst fears into it.

But there are plenty of MC parents who smoke inside, and plenty who don't get dressed til midday. In fact I'm not dressed now and would probably call myself MC-ish.

Books are banned starlight bit bonkers isn't it?

If there is one thing im not it's a snob. I habe been on the receiving end of judgement and prekudice and i always treat people as individuals.
Doesnt mean my children arent lucky to be at a "nice mc" school, because they are lucky. Children there believe the world is their oyster. Might b knocked out of them along the way but they all start at believing it

'Books are banned starlight bit bonkers isn't it?'

Probably. But I can't stand the things. I grew up with two hoarding teachers and couldn't see the floor for fag ash covered books and newspapers. The things bring me out in an irrational rage.

I took dd to a kids party yesterday - all kids from a very middle class naice village. Two mums (both well off Audi driving middle class types) almost had an actual fist fight over their little darlings fighting. They were shouting and screaming at each other in front of all the kids.

I grew up with a single mum in a council house, my manners are a different scale to those two yesterday!!

Assuming the OP is not on the wind up, i actually cant believe so many are giving her a hard time. Who wants children to go to a school where parents are too lazy to dress, have awful language and smoke around them? Personally dislike tattoos and piercings but know its wrong to assume things about the person before knowing them.

FSM are always stated in the Ofsted of a school so that prospective and current parents can use them to form their own judgement of a school. These children are statistically proven to do less well and the results of the school may be lower as a result.

With regards to ambition/aspiration/expectation, whether we like it or not there are pockets of disadvanatge in the UK where all ambition/aspiration/expectation/hope has been eroded.

Otherwise, what are people saying? That it's the fault of those people that they are disadvantaged?

If you happen to live in one of those areas, or be allocated a school in one of those areas, it is extremely difficult to float to the top, to remain hopeful and ambitious. If it was easy, everyone would do it, no?

I will never as long as I live understand people who, in order to defend the defenceless and champion the downtrodden poor, think that they must automatically excuse or just ignore revolting behaviour. It is the behaviour of those parents that will truly mark their children as disadvantaged, not their economic status.

Because as many people have pointed out, there are plenty of very decent people who happen to be poor, who have aspirations for their children to do well at school and to have manners and standards, who would not dream of shouting or fighting like fishwives in the school playground in front of their children.

And plenty of nice MC children and their parents have revolting behaviour.

Wow what a narrow view of the world. I wonder what they all think of that stuck-up woman who's clearly looking down her nose at them at the school gates.

You do know that poverty isn't infectious, don't you? And it's not something inflicted by God on the least deserving members of society?

So much for the season of goodwill!

Completely agree with you WF

'whether we like it or not there are pockets of disadvanatge in the UK where all ambition/aspiration/expectation/hope has been eroded.

Otherwise, what are people saying? That it's the fault of those people that they are disadvantaged?'

Actually I think it is you WF who are implying that disadvantaged-ness is caused by lack of ambition/aspiration/expectation and hope. It isn't. The absence of these things is usually a consequence of poor social policy.

If the thread were simply intended to be about revolting behaviour of parents in the playground, there would have been no need to mention the socio-economic profile of the school. Nor would the thread be called 'school friends from deprived families'. Because you get scrotes in all income categories.

Instead the title would be about the parents' behaviour and the OP would presumably be looking for advice about what to do.

Actually usualsuspect I'm not sure that that is true to anything like the same extent. Otherwise where would be the advantage in gaining a place at that much coveted leafy MC school that people in poorer areas complain they have so little access to? I'm sure there is fabulous teaching in some disadvantaged areas and lacklustre teaching in some expensive ones, but the bottom line is that a school is perceived as 'good' or not, by its intake. Or rather the parents of its intake. Your peer group os everything.

Of course there will be the odd incident, the odd loudmouth or arsehole at the posh or MC school, but in the main the parents' behaviour/attitude and self discipline is very good by comparison and so is the children's. That's why they are over-subscribed. It's not just because they have trees in the road and a Waitrose in the town.