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 know what the model is and I agree with that model. I was just saying if you believe society should adapt do you also believe people with extra needs shouldn't be accepted on to something just because they have a disability?

Because it's coming across like you think just because your child can't play sports that automatically they should be in the choir if they can hold a tune?

As alresdy said, I have a child with extra needs and would hate to think they are a sympathy choice. I would like them to get picked for something on their own merit.

Upsetting as it is OP, your child wasnt picked. You need to help them get over it now and enlist the school in helping them to make more friends. If you feel the process was unfair by all means raise it with the school and hopefully they will take it on bosrs. But I think you need to support your daughter to move on from this disappointment.

The Urdd is great. I was a member and went to the local Aelwyd (club), along with my friends and kids from nearby villages, and we did various fun activities including going camping at Llangrannog and boating on Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake). I sang (badly) in choirs and I don't think we got very far.

The Aelwyd was set up by two teachers from the village, and I am grateful for what they did.

My son can't do sports either due to a disability and he has no interest in accessible sports because he simply wants to join the local team with his mates and unfortunately that isn't possible. That's the reality of his disability and he does need to come to terms with that and I'm sure he will, with time.

Accessible sports/groups aren't always the solution.

It's a life lesson sometimes you get beat. My dd does athletics, she can't win every race they have to learn and motivate to try harder and learn to deal with disappointment. I see some parents complain to officials, it's so embarrassing they can't accept their child got beat this time. It's a real poor example to thier kids. Think of all the free lunch times she will have, sell it as a positive.

I agree, there’s a lot more work needed to make the mainstream accessible too

Reframing it as a positive from your perspective doesn’t make it a positive from my DD’s perspective. My DD is 9 and the thing she loves to do most are singing and being with her friends. This decision stops both of those options.

More than that, it means she is alone at lunchtime, the other children that don’t do choir are mainly boys who prefer to play football. Football is neither accessible nor appealing to my DD so her only option is to stay alone, and yesterday the choir practices 4 times in the day meaning that DD was alone most of the day.

@LovelyBranches youve ignored my posts where I asked you about whether your DD was really “alone” at lunchtimes, since your OP says that actually she sat with another girl (so it’s not just football playing boys who aren’t in the choir).

You are changing your story to support your position. The reality is that the decision has absolutely nothing to do with your DD’s disability and all this is a complete red herring. It’s not helpful to your DD to make everything about her disability, or to encourage her to see discrimination where there is none.

I think you need to talk to the school about this. Honestly, leaving three children out of 20 out is very unfair. It means they are being isolated from the rest of their class, especially if practicing taking place most lunchtimes. It’s exclusion.

Sorry I don’t mean to ignore, there’s a lot of messages.

My DD did move over to finish her lunch with a girl from her class. This child has been mean to DD recently so it wasn’t something she wanted to do. When outside this girl did something else and excluded my dd again so she was alone in the yard. The other girl has never been involved in the choir and is an athletic child who often has permission from the school to miss days and leave early to compete in her sport.

Yesterday DD kind of hung around other kids who are younger than her but she felt out of place and upset.

I have emailed, they haven’t replied. I also mentioned it to DD’s class teacher that she’s alone and she told me to email the choir teachers.

But if you go for an audition, then you know there will be a chance you are not chosen.

They didn’t just announce who would be in the choir, they gave the children a chance to compete for a place. The OPs daughter didn’t have to go for the audition, she chose to. She wasn’t excluded for some arbitrary or cruel reason; she just didn’t perform to the requirements they were looking for.

I think it is really bad that she has been excluded. I hope the school sort it out. Were the teachers that did the selection trained singing teachers? I ask because both my (now adult DC) experienced not been chosen at primary school for performances by class teachers despite both beung very good singers. I used to wonder what the criteria for being chosen was because it didn't seem to be singing ability.

Or perhaps the teachers were clueless and/or biased.

My kids are now 22, 20 and 18, yet I've felt drawn to this thread because it's sparked memories of all the choir shenanigans when mine were at primary. The choir in this school (very different, London, multi-cultural, independent) was a huge deal - particularly for the girls who pretty much all very much wanted to be in it. And this was without any national competitions etc on the horizon. It was a social thing, as much as singing. I remember so well when that email would come out following the auditions at the end of Year 4 - who was on the list, , who was not, and the dramas that would ensue. I remember, one year, pretty much all the girls were put in the choir - bar one. The mum was mystified and talked to the school about how exclusionary this was - but they wouldn't change the decision. I thought it was outrageous behaviour on the part of the choir teacher, who had been there donkey's years and took it all a bit too seriously imo. I still think it was terrible and I remember that poor girl. And I say that as a mum of 3 DC who went all through this school all gained massively from the experience of being in this choir. One of them wouldn't have known he could sing really (boys often don't). He went on to be a choral scholar at Oxbridge, has been in bands and still performs now. It all started with being noticed and selected at age 10 to sing the 'Once in Royal David's City' solo at the Xmas concert. I know it sounds silly, but where it not for that opportunity, I really don't think he would ever have discovered he could sing at all.

So yes, I do think these type of decisions matter and the memories can stay with them (and you). And yes, it is definitely possible to think a pointlessly exclusionary system is just plain wrong, even when your kids are not the ones excluded. Fair enough if a school wants to select a minority for something like this. But there is no excuse to leave one child or a very small number of children out. I'm amazed any teacher wouldn't instinctively know this.

If a child, particularly one with a disability, SPLD, difficult background, or low confidence for any other reason, has found something they love, then any primary school worth it's salt should nurture this. Not slam doors in children's faces and cause them to doubt themselves before they even start. This is a small school by the sound of it. Surely they know the kids and the ramifications. Honestly, you wonder what some teachers are even thinking.

Sorry for typos above (where /were etc) - no glasses on!

It’s not utopia at all. I’ve worked in secondary and primary and latterly doing supply in primaries with between 50 and 250 pupils. In the smaller ones, girls and boys are needed to even make a team! Things have changed since I was in primary in the 70s when we even had a yard just for girls!

My point is this - year groups mix freely, and the staff on duty will try their best to get children to engage with each other. There are friendship groups of course, but nobody is socially excluded. I have also seen pupils at the end of the day start complaining to their parents that they’ve been alone, that nobody played with them etc etc, when the reality was very different. As teachers we don’t necessarily believe everything that pupils tell us about their life outside school and the reverse is also true!

This is your experience though.

In my DD’s school years 4,5,6 share a yard. Years 1,2 and 3 share a yard. It’s the same yard but they are separated by a metal fence.

So while DD’s friends are off practising. The mostly boys who remain are playing football on her yard. In order for her to mix with other children she has to go to the younger children. To do that she has to stand by the metal fence and hope that one of the younger children plays/talks with her through the metal fence.

So she is the only girl in 4,5,6 not chosen for the choir? Other than the girl she dislikes?

They don’t sound very nurturing. Have they always been like this?

Maybe you need to try and speak to a teacher quickly at the end of the day if there is time and they allow it? Your daughter needs to be ok at lunch break. How long will these rehearsals last?

From the OP: "she sings all the time and will tell anyone who listens how she wants to work in the theatre when she is older".

Of course, she may change her mind, but if she doesn't this is a lesson she needs to learn as soon as possible.

My daughter, now in her mid 20s, said she wanted to work in theatre since she was about 5. She has pursued that determinedly and is now a professional actor. But she had to get very used to auditioning and not getting the roles that she wanted. She is still devastated on occasion, but she knows that this is the reality of the profession. She also had great teachers who explained that not everyone who auditions will be cast, and that it shouldn't be taken personally, but to learn from it and keep trying.

"she sings all the time and will tell anyone who listens how she wants to work in the theatre when she is older"
is probably why she wasn't chosen for the choir.

I think this is the only thing that matters tbh - the school’s response. It doesn’t really matter what we all think!

Why?

I think it is a bit different being rejected when you are older and competing against other good singers compared with being rejected from a primary school choir who accepted virtually everyone including children who probably aren't very good.

The point is that there will be a reason why the choir teacher made that decision, and OP may never know that reason, nor should she. But if the daughter truly does want to pursue this path, this will be the first of many "rejections", however talented she is.