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

[LovelyBranches]

Dd is 9 and loves singing. She goes to her school choir after school group and goes to signing lessons outside of school. She has competed (and won) at the Eisteddfod.

Yesterday she came home from school very upset, unbeknownst to us she had auditioned for a place in her choirs Christmas show which will be on tv. She didn’t get in. There were 3 children in her year that didn’t get in. DD was devastated and very upset about it.

Today she came home upset because the teachers had taken the new choir group to practice and DD had no one in her usual friendship group to eat with. She ended up eating with another girl in her class who hasn’t been very nice to her recently.

I feel really upset for DD, she sings all the time and will tell anyone who listens how she wants to work in the theatre when she is older. I am aware that the school probably had a limited number of places but I feel like they should have given places to all year 6 and year 5 pupils rather than what they did which was allow year 6 and pick selectively between year 5 and 4.

AIBU to think that schools shouldn’t have auditions for choirs at primary school level.

I would let her teacher know that her friendship group has been affected and that she's upset. You don't have to ask for them to change the decision, but I would let the school know how she's doing and the issues she's facing at lunchtime. My son is 9 and I'd definitely talk to the teacher if this happened to him.

Dont let the didactic comments from perfect strangers upset you OP.

It's the same in sport. Anyone can join in after school football but only the best footballers get to play in matches. You probably won't want to hear it but maybe your DD is not as good at singing as you think she is. She can eat lunch with other DC not in choir.

You're saying the school's bullying her because she didn't do enough in the audition stage to get selected?

Go on - be THAT poster who demonstrates that she hasn't even bothered to read the first paragraph of the first post properly. OP's daughter is already getting singing lessons privately. She clearly is good if she has won at an Eisteddfod.

Exactly. The situation is very odd given most children can’t sing that well at this age so the one child who can is usually a teacher’s dream. But maybe she had a terrible audition. Who knows?

the best thing for the OP’s daughter to do is ask for feedback. That is what I always encourage my children to do when they aren’t selected for something. Never ask why they haven’t been picked but what can I do to improve enough so next time I (hopefully!) will be!

@IdentityCris the OPs daughter was in a CHOIR that won an award at an Eisteddfod. She didn't win an individual prize.

My niece is studying a singing and dance degree and believe me it is cutthroat. She has a beautiful voice and took the lead on all her school productions and at dance school danced in several overseas countries in competition but now at Italia Conte finds she doesn't get the lead roles. Others even more talented do. Your DD needs to learn resilience if she wants to enter the singing and dancing world as rejection is a big part of it.

But the point that she is a good singer stands. It's not just OP's opinion, it's the opinion of a teacher of singing.

Do read OP's posts. Her daughter has had far too many opportunities to learn resilience, having had to deal with multiple operations and disability all her life. She doesn't need yet more opportunities at the age of 9.

That's life, though. You can't be chosen for everything, and surely primary school is the best time to learn this rather than when you're older and entitled as you're so used to getting into everything you want, when you want as your schools included you in everything in the name of inclusivity/ in case the parents kicked off?!.
Learning how to deal with competitiveness etc is an important life skill. The job of the parents can be secretly sad for their child, but at the end of the day say they're sorry that they didn't get in, but they can always try again.
I was always taught "if at first you don't succeed, try try again."
Is that not a thing anymore? If not, it should be. 🙂

If the choir only wanted the best children then they would have made the year 6 children go through an audition process. They didn’t-all year 6 children who wanted to take part were allowed to.

There’a also a gender dynamic. Most of the children who are not involved in the choir are the boys and my Dd told me this morning that they all played football so she was on the yard on her own while all her friendship group were in the choir that she normally attends.

Exclusion is not a resiliance building activity.

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 .

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.

Yes, that is a perfectly reasonable response.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.