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

Trying and failing, followed by picking yourself up and starting again is a really important lesson. No one gets through life without failure and disappointments, it’s how you react that’s important. Do not express dissatisfaction with the process to your daughter. Of course they audition, that’s fair.

Your reaction is vital. You say
“That’s a shame, you can try again next year.” End of. No drama, or “that’s really unfair”.

I'm sorry I didn't mean to cause offence. X

Yes, so in year four, 15 children wanted to join and out of that 15, 3 children were excluded. Doesn't matter about year 5 and 6. If 3 out of 15 children were excluded in year four, that's not good.

Couldn't agree more. Children should beable to sing for the joy of it in the school choir, whatever their perceived ability, not pandering to media needs.

With respect, it feels like you're confusing suffering with resilience here. OP's daughter's disability isn't an opportunity for building resilience, it's something she was born with and hasn't chosen and has no doubt made her life more difficult than other children's lives around her. She hasn't had a choice in it.

Auditioning for choirs, singing competitions etc by choice is in no way analogous to having a disability. If the OP's DD wants to sing competitively, she will require resilience to bounce back from failures at auditions, to keep going with what she loves despite not always getting through audition processes, getting parts or winning competitions. All children (and parents) who want to enter this world, whether or not they have disabilities, will need that, because it's about their talent, not their disability, as long as they are not excluded from processes for accessibility reasons (no indication that's the case here despite a lot of conjecture on the thread!).

Conpetitive choirs and the like aren't going to go "poor Sarah, she's already had to be so resilient in her life, we can't let her fail at audition and not get in". That just isn't how the world works. And nobody wants to be Sarah who gets picked because mum is a nightmare.

OP's DD is entitled to equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome.

OP's best approach here would be a sensible conversation with the school to seek honest feedback about why her DD wasn't chosen this time, with the aim of helping her understand and supporting her through it. And to see what the school can do to help with the lunchtime situation.

Your daughter is struggling without her friend group, and you should absolutely talk to the school about that. YANBU to be concerned.

YABU to think the solution is to give her someone else's place in the choir, and assume they didn't earn it. It sounds like DD has a tough time of it with her disability, and I understand singing is something she loves. But the school don't owe it to her to put her in the choir because of those two things. The bitter way you're talking about them - all this "they think they're Simon Cowell" stuff - isn't fair. They'll have had their reasons for the choices they made, and those reasons won't be "Let's be cruel to a nine year old in a wheelchair, for no reason!"

She's just too young, and on this occasion she missed out. The posters who say this is an opportunity to teach her resilience are right. I'm sure DD is a tough kid, and she's overcome a lot. But her health struggles aren't the same thing. Accepting you can't do something because you have physical limitations is a different type of hurt, compared to knowing you could do it, but you didn't get picked. Both are crushing to a nine year old, but in different ways.

I know it's tough. You've probably been in fight mode most of her life, because her health situation is unfair, and "never give up, never let it win" has been what you needed to do to give her the best life possible. But sometimes she's going to face regular kid problems too, and those need a different approach. She needs to learn the same lessons as every other kid. Here, it sounds like she needs support in finding new friends for her lunch break. She needs help accepting that just because she loves something and she's good at it doesn't mean she'll get a place - but there's always next year.

Who knows? This might even be an opportunity for DD to pick up a new hobby. Singing can be the thing she loves most, but it doesn't have to be her only thing. Can you try to get her excited about something else? Learning a language? Art? Fair enough if the boys have their football, but she can't be the only girl left with a lot of time to fill as she didn't make the choir. I'd talk to the school about putting something else on for this group. They might be open to the idea, if you approach them the right way. I'm sure they want DD to be happy too.

It sounds like all of year 6 got to go, and then about half of the year 4 and 5 kids, which doesn’t sound unreasonable for an opportunity with limited numbers - ie take all the older kids plus the best of the rest if they can fit a few more in.

It is what it is. Agree with others that OP should focus on how her DD will be supported at lunch rather than complaining about the process. If DDs friend(s) also hadn’t been chosen then this wouldn’t be an issue.

It doesn't make much difference - it's about how her daughter feels and that all her friends are away. I would definitely speak to the school if this happened to my child - not in a he must get chosen for everything way- but he's really upset and feels excluded because of this - can you please help him with this.

You've had a hard time on here. FWIW I agree with you, leaving out 3 children is really quite horrible, especially at that age. If it had been half of them picked and half weren't then that wouldn't be too bad but such a small number being left out? Just unnecessary.

OP the TV company may have specified the number of kids of each age group and sex they wanted. Why not speak to the school for your own sanity?

And mention how she is feeling over lunch. Maybe they could give her a task so she feels valued too; ask how they can help with her self-esteem. Kids that age love being made to feel important eg helping in the library etc.

That sounds like she has learned an essential life lesson.

Cuddle her and explain that other opportunities will come along. 9 is not too young to learn this lesson.

I wouldn't recommend a career in theatre if you aren't emotionally strong enough for the audition process and being rejected. It's par for the course. You're not owed a chance to be on stage, people want to have to want to see you there!

Unfortunately this time others performed better. Or maybe they knew she was the theatre kid and wanted to give some less confident children who's singing improved a lot over the year the chance to shine.

So it doesn't even necessarily mean she wasn't good enough. As you say this is a regular school, not a professional choir.

I hope she can do plenty of singing and acting in after school groups. But you can't always get into everything. That goes for all situations not just performance.

I’d feel disappointed too OP, but you can’t change things now. It’s done. They’re not going to backtrack or it could set a precedent for other future activities. What you need to do now is manage your daughter’s upset. Tell the teacher so they can keep an eye on things at school. Speak to your daughter about options for school meal times. ATM, she may be focused on the situation rather than working out options. And just provide feedback to the head teacher for the future. Nothing may come off the back of it, but it might.

@LovelyBranches - it’s really rubbish. Honestly setting up an activity you will run in school time and taking the majority of a cohort to do it is just really poor.

It’s a bit like at my daughter’s middle school where they had 150 kids in the year and ran an outwards bound trip for 135 kids max (over 3 trips of 45 kids each over a week (M-W,W-F,F-M) They assume at least some won’t want to come but in her year 142 applied and 7 didn’t get a place. My daughter actually did but I thought it was a terrible idea to set something up when such a small minority were left out. If they’d just done 2 trips more kids would have missed it but they would have felt a lot less singled out. They have loads of other trips for a max of 30-50 kids and while it’s disappointing not to get a place on one of those it’s really not the same scenario as having to watch virtually your entire group share an experience you are excluded from.

It's for a TV show so is possibly out of the schools hands such as them having a preference for older children for whatever reason which is potentially why Year 6 weren't required to audition.

OP’s daughter was a member of a choir that won. This time the choir has to be smaller than the one that won previously (sounds like a limit imposed by the tv programme, not the school).

Within any choir of any size there will be a range of abilities. It sounds like on this occasion OP’s daughter was deemed to be less good than others in the choir, and so wasn’t chosen for the tv opportunity. That doesn’t mean she is a bad singer objectively or necessarily worse than those who did get selected, it just means that in that particular audition she performed less well.

OP’s issue seems to be that they used a selection process based on ability rather than age. If they had used age (ie all of year 5 and 6 and none from year 4), then her DD still wouldn’t have got to go, but at least her friends also wouldn’t have got to go.

Personally I think that it is reasonable for the school to want their best singers to take part in a televised opportunity. They clearly are inclusive in relation to the choir more generally, as it seems that anyone can join, including for the competition they won previously. This is something special and one off and of course it is sad for OP’s DD but this is absolutely a feature of music at high levels and it’s important to learn that. OP just needs to help her daughter understand that it’s something she can get over, as she has overcome other challenges in the past.

I would talk to the head about this. Allowing all the oldest kids in without auditions and then making the youngest kids audition is madness. Especially if only 3 were excluded.

I totally get it OP. When I was in Year 8, I was the only child who auditioned who wasn’t picked for drama club. Why they even auditioned for a club, not a particular performance, instead of just letting everyone in at what was only a very small school is beyond me, but that’s not the point. I did drama lessons outside of school, and had for years. Majority of other children did not. People can say “you should just accept that you weren’t good enough” but actually it’s very hard to believe that all the children who have no training will be better than the one who does. (And as a parent now, I have sat and watched DD’s school performances and you can pick the ones who do things outside of school and of course they’re better.) I think that teacher just didn’t like me for whatever reason. A similar thing happened later in the year involving the same teacher.

I never actually told my parents about it and I can’t imagine what they would have done if I had. Probably nothing.

Yes, that is a perfectly reasonable response.

That is what I'd focus on. Tell the teachers that she is struggling at lunch time without anyone to play with and she needs some support with that.

But the daughter now is left to her own devices as pretty much all the kids are doing the choir. I don’t think that is teaching children resilience. This isn’t an after school activity. This is during the school day .