AIBU to think primary schools should not audition children for choirs?

I’ve not read all the replies. But could you speak to the school l about your dd (and the others if they wish) being substitutes? That way they get to go to the rehearsals ands if anyone is ill on the actual day one of them can step in.

No one on here knows what was in the teachers head or how out has been handled at school. So a chat might solve a lot of issues.

As another PP had said, if your DD had been selected & you then found out about the process for selection would you have made a thread on MN complaining about it? If you are honest, I imagine you wouldn't have felt the same sense of outrage.

It's tough and it sounds a bit OTT, but presumably this is the school you have chosen for your DD & this is how they do things.

You presumably can't change it so all you can do is help your DD to accept the situation and make the best of it.

She’ll get over it. Like all of us, she will have many disappointments in life. 🤷‍♀️

Irelevant where it is. In or out of school, people get picked or not picked.
In school she hasnt been picked .

Out of school she has been picked for solos. Which means others havent. There will be disapointed children there who did not get solos.

I doubt your behaviour is helping your DD to get over her disappointment, OP.

I understand it’s upsetting for your dd and you’re annoyed on her behalf. At 9 it’s hard for her to understand what’s going on and feel deflated by the situation. However, she wasn’t forced to audition, she wanted to, I do agree with others that this is a matter of resilience. If she wants a career in theatre then this very well may be the start of realising that not all parts are perfect for her and she isn’t perfect for all parts.

I know she felt rubbish eating whilst friends are away rehearsing, that is rubbish but sadly it happens in a lot of schools when kids go to different lunch clubs. I think you should focus on how well she did auditioning and work on what she wants to do next, put the focus on something else.

I’m sorry you’re annoyed at the school, they couldn’t t select everyone and selected the children who performed best, that’s hard to hear for you and your dd but they didn’t purposefully exclude her.

If she wants to work in theatre she needs to get used to this.
I remember wanting to be the May Queen so badly at school. Didn’t get it. I wanted to be Mary in the school play. Didn’t get it. I was very disappointed but honestly got over it in a day or two. Don’t make a massive deal of this. There will be many disappointments in her life. We all have to learn at some point we don’t always get what we want.

I don’t think you’re being at all unreasonable and well done for your measured and reasonable responses💐

It's not 3 children out of 20. It's 3 children out of 15. There are 5 children who didn't audition because they aren't in the choir.

So 12 children in her class are involved in the event and 8 aren't. She has 7 other children to play with at lunchtime.

If there are limited places, how else is the school expected to make a decision?

I totally agree OP. Too young for all of that. It takes the joy out of everything for them.

DD will be picked another year.
Tell her you love her singing.
Ask her to sing many songs over the next few weeks.
It is all good practise for when she auditions again.

Lunch. Pack some extra cakes and say they are for her to share with her new lunch time mates.
She will soon learn that she is good at making new friends.

Help your daughter not be a bad sport. Help her to compliment the choir. You, too, say that they sound wonderful.
Express your wish that they will win.

Watch the competition on TV.
This will help DD's attitude in normalising the audition process and her confidence to try again next time.

Sometimes we want something very badly and don't get it. It's essential to learn this lesson while we're still a child, so we can develop the skills for handling disappointment. Of course it's sad that your child is devastated, but that doesn't mean the process is wrong.

Bench pressing at the gym and trolley pushing in Tesco's are not competitions!

If you really thought they shouldn’t audition and be selective, you would have suggested that they should have drawn the names randomly from a hat, or something like that. The fact that you think they should have let all Y5 and Y6 in automatically just shows that really you’re only trying to think of a way that automatically included your DD. They probably wanted to include children from a wide age range anyway.

If it had been a football or dancing competition, wouldn’t you have thought it was reasonable to pick the best players/dancers?

It's hard for your daughter and I’m sorry she is disappointed, but that’s life. Presumably she'll get another chance next year.

Absolutely any child of any ability should be able to sing in a school choir .

Rather than being negative about the situation which your daughter will pick up on why not try and put a positive spin on it and teach your daughter that good things can come from what seems like a bad place. She could view as an opportunity to make new friends with some of the other 7 year 4s who aren’t part of the choir. Who knows maybe she’ll make a new best friend?

Poor kid has almost certainly learnt that lesson every time she does sports and games, given that she is also disabled. What a mean post.

It must be a big choir if it contains the whole of Year 6, some of Year 5 and 15 of Year 4, so I agree that it sounds ridiculous leaving out just three in the year group - especially when it means those three are going to be excluded regularly right up to Christmas. The strong likelihood is that they're going to get some drop-outs, so it really couldn't do any harm to fit another three ion.

I’m thinking her ‘self-esteem’ is just fine. She obviously expected to be picked regardless of anyone else.
You should be encouraging her to understand that sometimes other people get chosen. Learning humility will be good for her, and you.

For goodness sake! When I was 10 I was off to high school, leaving behind my friends who were the same age as me but still at primary school. I had to find new people to eat lunch with. When I was younger and moved up a class I and a couple of other children were simply taken out of our class and sent to another one, we had to deal with it, which we did. I was not a sporty child and was always among the last to be picked for sports teams, it hasn't blighted my life one bit.

You really are doing your daughter no favours here. It's your job to teach her how to overcome disappointment and bounce back.

Yes, yabu

How about teaching your daughter to have dignity and hold her head high.

Butthurt and petulant is not a good look.

You're right that it's unlikely the school can do anything about it at this stage but they need to be made aware of it and to make sure that it doesn't happen again and to review how they allocate places in future. They can also be mindful that the three children who have been left out may need some support over the coming months when the other 12 children are off to rehearsals.

What do you expect the school to do about it at this stage, though?

If there aren’t enough spaces, there aren’t enough spaces. They can hardly take places away from children who have already been told they have a place - that really would be unfair.

Fair enough to speak to the school about supporting OP’s daughter at lunchtime etc if she isn’t getting on with the children in her year who aren’t involved in choir, but not to try and force the school to make a different decision.