Re competence: I imagine it depends a huge amount on the culture? At most of the schools I went to, social/appearance-performance (which I was terrible at) was how one joined the popular set. At the "nerd camp" I went to, which was filtered strongly for competence at and interest in academics, it was the stupid/delicate/backwards (to quote Third Remove) students who were bullied, and who could escape from victimization by displaying competence in some area. Kingscote appears to have a strong competence-based culture, so I could imagine it going a little more like that.