AIBU to think that not all school activities have to be inclusive?

[manicinsomniac]

Obviously not going to be able to go massively into detail here but I was approached by a fairly irate parent recently wanting to know why I had not selected her child for a school activity. The child does not have the skill that is required. At all. The activity is audition only and has always been advertised as such. But apparently I am being exclusive and also favouring my own child (who did get in)

To me this is ridiculous. My daughter is good at this skill so she is involved. However, she is most certainly not in two other activites that she tried out for because she is hopeless at both those things! I know that and wouldn't dream of trying to insist that she gets a place.

Obviously school subjects should be inclusive of all children and I also think there should be a good range of clubs open to all (which there is at our school. I run 3 different ones myself and only one has a selection criteria) But, when it comes to such specific skills, surely we have not gone so PC that we can't select children with an aptitude for one activity and leave them out of another??

AIBU?

In this case, the Op says there is another choir which is open to anybody who wants to go, the one the child did not get into was access via audition only.

Someone asked about what was meant by "fair" - when I used it I meant that there should be a good range of activities, so that everyone had a chance to do something, and that ideally the timings should be such that they would all know that something they could participate in would be coming up - if not immediately, then soon.

For example, our school has a Glee Club, for which you have to audition, but also has a choir for every year group which anyone can sign up for. Both perform at school concerts. There are "invitation only" sports extension clubs, but also the same sports have a sign up parallel class for anyone (first come first served in theory, but a very high ceiling on numbers, so I've never heard of anyone being turned away). The key thing to me is that there are enough activities, and a great enough range, that everyone has the opportunity to belong to something.

yes, exactly scaevola.

somebody asked if the child auditioned - yes, they did.

Surely prep schools are selective to begin with, so the parent can't be anti-competition and against excellence being a criteria for inclusion in a competitive group.

downbytheriverside - some are selective, some aren't. Ours isn't actually.

Not every child can be good at everything - even though my DD has SN, I made sure she was aware of this - she always has been, and always will be shit at maths (much like myself!). However, boy can she cook. She has a skill that a lot of the maths-y kids in her school are shit at.

As I tell my dc - Nobody can be good at everything, but everyone has SOMETHING they are good at.

I don't believe in sugar-coating the truth. The mother is BU, her dc isn't good enough for the selective choir, hard cheese IMO - I'm sure her dc has skills in other areas, the mother would do well to find where her dc shines - ALL dc do somewhere.

Farting in a lift.
Wrong on so many levels.

Not even by parental ability to pay fees?

Oh yes, they are financially selective of course. I misunderstood, I thought you meant selective by some kind of aptitude.