This seemed like a good idea, but appears to have been organized by the latest losing team from The Apprentice!

The website (on which schools can upload a video of their choir performing) crashed at the end of last week "due to unexpectedly high levels of traffic". What did they expect? obviously hundreds of schools have entered - every school choir knows "Joseph" and every parent/friend/relation of all those children is trying to view and vote.

The official statement first deemed voting suspended until yesterday (Tues) and extended the deadline for entries.

Now, voting remains suspended, a new message states that the new, new deadline is Mon 21st May, and the top twenty ranked choirs will be announced 25th May, with the winner being announced on 29th May.

It was a really difficult site to navigate when it was working, I can't help feeling it's all going a bit pear shaped, which is a shame for all the kids (one of my daughters included!) who have entered/want to enter.

That's a real shame. I hope it gets sorted out soon.

There is not much time for voting, is there?

Looks like the Beeb have fluffed up again.
I agree marksthespot. The navigation was pants !

"Sort it out BBC, or you'll have a hoard of angry mums to deal with... and I wouldn't want to be in your shoes...

I've been waiting since last Thursday to vote for my son! Would love to direct family to be able to see him singing on the BBC site!

Have been logging onto the voting page every day to try to vote for a friends child's choir. BBC couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery.

Graham Norton obviously hasn't been updated!

He's just announced LIVE that the deadline has passed (no it's been extended!) and to go to the website now to vote for your favourite choir (voting is suspended).

Left hand, right hand, i could go on....

I hope someone will vote for our local village school. It badly needs support as is a tiny school. It would really help the children too if you could rate us highly as they are buzzing. Naturally if you have your own school vote for them, but if not then try us please

http://www.josephchoirsearch.co.uk/choirs/198

The voting is working again!

(Expect the site to crash under the volume of voters who have been waiting days to vote...!)

You have to register now though.

Good luck to all the kids (sorry, nicholas3000, but I have my own allegience.)

Is the voting rigged or something? The choir currently top (and several others ranked high) are dreadful. It's a shame, as there are some really good ones there.

I don't think it is rigged as such but, rather than unbiased individuals voting for the best singing, what is happening is that every Mum, Dad, Aunty, Uncle, Grandparent, friend, teacher etc of every child represented will vote for their own little darling.

So the schools that can drum up the most support/people who can be bothered with the vaguaries of this website will do best.

True, but the website says it's based on the average rating given to each choir rather than the total number of votes.

I've got quite addicted to the choir thing and have found some brilliant ones, eg http://www.josephchoirsearch.co.uk/choirs/2007

Ok seriously our junior school choir needs the votes...pretty please
they really are very good, please at least check them out.
http://www.josephchoirsearch.co.uk/choirs/258

EDIT And the picture on the homepage is of them

Good Luck to them all!

If anyone does need to vote - HURRY!!! - voting is due to close at 3pm today (Friday).

Interesting item on the BBC News website about the voting: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6693065.stm

I read that and thought it was disgusting that people would intentionally jeopodise things for other schools.

Although the rating system was a terrible idea in the first place.

I agree. Lots of the choirs who were in the top 20 when I last looked couldn't even sing in tune! And then our junior school choir could and had good harmonies and were down in 209th

I know, it's unfair. Last time I looked, the ones in top place looked and sounded as though they hated every minute of what they were doing and many of the other top ones were either out of tune, as you say, or just shouting. It's a real pity, as there were some excellent choirs there - one local to me was in about 790th place, despite singing beautifully, totally in the right style, with real thought having obviously gone into it.

This isn't a very open & public procedure, and nobody is being charged for their votes, so now that the bbc are "reviewing the ratings", they can announce who they like in the top 20, really.

They should really have had some sort of screening/judging process first, and let the public vote on the top 20, then more people would have voted on merit rather than personal allegiance.

I don't think they thought it through beforehand very well.

Yes, that would have been a really good idea.

I agree. I think there are over 100 schools on the website, you couldn't listen to them all let alone rate them.

There were about 850!

yeah it was a ridiculous amount

You're kidding - that's just ridiculous

I think I was just looking at the recently added section and there were 148.

Due to irregularities in the voting (where have we heard that before) the BBC has decided to disregard the online votes for the Joseph Choir and use a panel to decide on the the top 20 choirs out of the 843 entrants.

How naive are the BBC? From the outset it was obvious to anyone that the voting procedure was doomed to fail and open to corruption. This is the BBC's explanation as to what happened.

It was badly set up, but try explaining that to all the poor kids who entered and are really excited about it.

Their faith in adult competence must be shattered...first Blue Peter lets them down, now this!

Children love Joseph, it really is foolish of the bbc to upset so very many people.



(I think they have been reading this forum though, as I suggested that a panel would have been a better selection process in this very thread. I await my consultation fee...)