BGT auditions in schools so pupils won’t play truant to enter the show

CHILDREN are being auditioned at school for Britain’s Got Talent to stop them bunking off lessons, it has been revealed.

Teachers say that youngsters have been playing truant as they attempt to find instant stardom on the ITV talent show.

As a result, for the first time producers have held auditions at dozens of secondary schools and colleges around the UK for the new series.

The move has helped reduce unauthorised absence levels in some schools on the days of auditions.

Teacher Angela Butler said Britain’s Got Talent spent two hours at her school - Newtown High School, in Powys, mid-Wales – and a local sixth form college in November.

Around 30 Newtown High pupils aged 11 to 18 sang and played instruments for producers during preliminary auditions after gaining their parents’ permission.

‘An absolute

travesty’

Mrs Butler, a head of year, described similar on-site auditions across the region as a preventative measure to stop youngsters skipping school.

Speaking at the NASUWT union’s annual conference in Cardiff, she attacked the shocking truancy levels in the city caused by auditions for talent shows.

The 52-year-old said the day for auditions was ‘the day throughout Wales when most kids are absent’.

She added: ‘I think that is an absolute travesty, that kids think that is the way that they’re going to have a route out of poverty and not education.’

Speaking afterwards, Mrs Butler told how Britain’s Got Talent had changed how it auditions to stop pupils ‘coming down to Cardiff’ on school days.

She said: ‘For a couple of years we had absences. It must have been a problem throughout Wales because this time, for the auditions that have happened for Britain’s Got Talent, they actually sent people into schools.

‘When the producers from the programme came to our school, they said they were going all around schools to prevent exactly this [truancy]. They spent two hours in our school and they must have seen 30 kids, perhaps more than that. Then they moved onto a sixth form college in the same town.’

But she also bemoaned how children now seem to think fame is the only way to succeed: ‘Children now think The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent or The X Factor or winning the lottery – that’s how they’re going to get on and have the things that they see celebrities doing. I do think that kids want this quick fix.’

Britain’s Got Talent – and its judging panel Simon Cowell, David Walliams, Amanda Holden and Alesha Dixon – is returning on Saturday for its ninth series, with ITV chiefs expecting bumper ratings.

A source from the show said: ‘Last year was the first time we’d ever gone to schools. We did go to schools all around the country.

‘We are the one of the few talent shows that allow kids to enter, so the logical extension of that was going to schools to allow kids to audition as easily as possible.’