ZooZoo

I would factor in £300-£500 a term for trips/uniform etc - i think if your household income is below a threshold though you might be able to claim some back. The girls pointe shoes are about £30 each and they can get through an average of six of those a term - the worst I heard of was 13 pairs a term! I am sure that you can contact the school if this level of expenditure is not possible for you - I am sure that they will be very helpful in assisting you if they can. I did hear that at Elmhurst a uniform allowance is built into the MDS whatever your income but WL is different.

I think you made a good choice there Waitingmum - the summer school and actual school are quite different so it is probably better for your daughter to wait and join with other new starters in year 7. That's not to say that the summer school isn't great - it is. But oddly my DS was homesick at summer school (they have more free time) but not at actual school (no time to be homesick!) With hindsight we should have skipped the summer school due to the homesickness but of course most children hopefully wouldn't get that!

I seem to remember that when we auditioned for Tring last year they did explain that the earlier auditions had used up a lot of beds. However, I am pretty sure that they also said that they had kept beds back for MDS kids taking part in the funding auditions later. I remember being glad we had not auditioned earlier in the year actually, as the pressure to pay the whacking deposit would have been tricky. We couldn't afford full fees, mind you, so it didn't take too long to make a decision to wait and see what happened with other schools. If it's true that Tring have used up all their beds and have no room for the MDS children to board, that seems very unfair.

Well done to the kids and the school - great achievement by all!

Congratulations Haggis - you all must be over the moon - where has your son "come from"? Was he WL? I am interested in seeing where US take their intake from...

I am rather shocked at the way the OP has put their position/view on this. There are many reasons why the children in year 11 may not be continuing, body shape, height, desire to go down a different path. We simply don't know. I suspect that body shape may be a lot to do with it. If you take 100 ten year old girls, as many as 10 may look to be suitable for training. By the time they are 16, I'd say you might be down to 2 out of the 100. That's not WL's fault is it? OP - to say you are "disgusted" is a bit strong. Anyone who has a child at WL or about to go there will, in my view, feel somewhat hurt by your view. Of course we all know that only a small percentage of children joining in year 7 will get through to US and an even smaller to the Company itself. They are competing against the world at the high levels. Our job as parents is to help them enjoy the journey, the ups and downs, the changes in direction. I am sure that children at all the vocational schools, providing that they are happy there (there will be some it does not suit) are learning amazing life skills as well as enjoying their dancing. To have any of these schools on your cv is a huge achievement and I wish them all well.

Oops - I actually meant to say "fun world" although maybe that was actually an accurate slip of the fingers!!

Congratulations to the yeses - welcome to the fund and mad world of vocational training! Good luck all others with your other auditions. Especially well done to those who made the call back at WL - I don't expect it was easy for them to choose between the girls at that stage. I am sure that they will do well with their other auditions.

I would have thought that they either mean 1. They have offered her a MDS without needing to go to funding audition, or 2. She is an overseas candidate, maybe, and won't get funding, but they have offered a bit off the fees because they want her. If it's 1, that doesn't seem really fair, IMO. Or it's not really true and what she means is that she has been offered a PLACE!

Good luck to everyone waiting - I know it's a really stressful wait. Please try and focus on the positive (hard I know) that it is SUCH a huge achievement to be called back for finals (look at the RB Annual Report which tells you how many audition!). Even if RB say "no" one year they welcome applications for following years so this is not a "one time only" opportunity. RB are not only assessing dancing ability but want their "type" - you could be a fantastic dancer but just not quite what they are looking for - not being offered a place at RB does not mean your child has failed in any way or won't make it as a dancer....

Oh dear Fiz I am sorry to hear that. The reason that I started this thread is/was that my own view, gleaned over just a few days, is that this is a real issue. Hence I wanted to make as many people aware as possible so that they could research and form their own view - my view is that Vitamin D seems a good idea, especially for dancers due to the high impact on bones/stress. Vitamin D can also assist with the healing process, it seems that some studies support this. I stress again I am not in any way medically qualified, but it was a hidden issue for me until recently.

I am sorry to hear of all the injured dancers who have been posting recently and wish you all a speedy recovery. I recently got chatting to an injured dancer who had found out they had a vitamin D deficiency. It is quite common and can lead to a higher incidence of stress fractures, I understand. I have no medical training but recent googling has led me to conclude that a vitamin D supplement might be a good idea for a dancing child (or anyone really as lots of adults in the Uk have the deficiency too, it seems). Does anyone know more about this than me? It is not something that I had thought about before but my recent research has been very interesting. It is hard to make enough vitamin D from sunlight in the UK, especially in Northern Uk or if you have darker toned skin.

Oooo - what year is that for Danceislife? Such exciting times! Good luck to everyone waiting!

I see that I opened a can of worms with my PD comment. I think CeliB puts the argument well. I certainly did not mean to imply that anyone's child who is black/mixed race/British Asian etc has got where they are with anything other than huge hard work and talent. I just observe that when my DS went to state school in a provincial area there were more ethnic minority children at that school than at his current vocational one in a large City and I think that is a shame. Perhaps in time Outreach programmes will manage to address the imbalance. Or maybe there is no imbalance, but my perception is that there is.

I don't know the answer but I would doubt that this is true. Why would a dancer who is not as "good" be offered a place at the expense of a better one? It doesn't make sense to do that IMO. Children at vocational schools have sacrificed home life and, in the case of their parents, a large amount of money (even if on MDS/DaDa) so it doesn't seem to me "fair" to do this, if it is done... I guess the auditioning panel might adjust their view of the candidate on offer. eg. - this candidate has reached this level on only one hour of ballet a week - that is amazing and so we have to see what they can do on ten hours/week. But otherwise I don't think that there should be positive discrimination as such, based on just the fact that the candidate has just not been at vocational school. I think that there should be positive discrimination for ethnic minority children (British asian/black) as they seem underrepresented, but that's all.

I am sure that they didn't say that there are no year 8 places did they? There are 12 year 7s and room for 13, I believe, so I don't think it is accurate to say that there are no year 8 places.

I saw some old point shoes on sale on Ebay once. They were dirty, battered and tatty and clearly not wearable. I wouldn't even have wanted them in my house. The bidding was up to £60 when I looked and the auction was not even over!!! I thought, who on earth would pay £60 for those? I think that there is a fetish thing for them clearly as the bidding was so high. Very odd.

I am sorry to hear of the nos posted here and wish you all luck for the future. Congratulations to the yeses! Irishballetmom I am surprised, actually, that your daughter did not make finals having seen the video you posted on another thread - she certainly has the "look" for Royal in my (ballet uneducated though) opinion. I think it goes to show how tricky it is for year 8 when there are so few places.

So exciting reading these posts and remembering what it was like last year! The WL finals is a great experience - such a lovely day - but you start to mentally "move in" and that is not an easy emotion to manage. There will be PTA members at the finals at WL so anyone attending finals should go over and have a big chat to them. They will all be happy to answer all your questions. I was bit shy of approaching them at first, but as soon as we got chatting I pestered them for a good hour or two while we waited for the kids to finish. Getting to the finals is a bit achievement. Plus, although it's not certain, there is a good chance of getting MA if you don't get WL, I would have thought....

Hi Happymum - the wait is agonising isn't it? Last year the results came by post not email - that was just as bad. As I recall the results came out in order of the auditions! There has been a lot of negative comments about WL on here lately but we are very happy with it. Sure, there are things that are great and things that could be done a bit better but my DS loves it and seems to be having a wonderful time. He never has a bad word to say about it, both dance and academic are small classes and the pastoral staff are all very caring. I certainly don't feel his confidence is being knocked, but he tends not to take corrections/criticism personally. I think in any dance school less confident children will find it harder as, by necessity, there is less time spent on telling them what is good, and more time spent on telling them what needs attention. But that's the nature of dance isn't it? Even principals get corrections, I imagine! Zoo

Thank you Interested Parent - that was what I was thinking of! If they assess for the next three years, taking a pay cut from 91k to 90k could save you £30k! Zoo

How much do the fees cost typically then? Trying to work out whether, say, if you earned £91,000 (I don't) it would be worth asking for a pay drop! For people who earn near a boundary figure, this would be worth knowing. I see that maintenance needs to be paid anyway after a certain threshold.... Do they take off any money for other children like with MDS?

Last year there was one new girl in year 8, three in year 9 and five in year 10. There were two new boys in year 8 only. I don't think any year 7 girls were assessed out so I presume that the year 8 girl was an extra which brought the numbers to 13. Two boys left and their places were filled with the two new boy starters in year 8. I think five girls left at the end of year 9, which is why so many were taken into year 10 that year. Each year can be very different though so it doesn't work like this every year, clearly.

Hi Cara - sorry to hear your news but you sound like you have a very positive attitude to this and I wish you luck for the future. I think it's really good that you posted this because this forum can show up a one-sided view otherwise (of course people prefer to post successes) and dancing is a series of two steps forward, one step back.....All the best. Zoo

Hi to everyone auditioning - exciting times! Last year they invited about 20 boys and 24 girls to the finals for WL I think. And a few (maybe 4 or so for each of years 8 and 9 at a guess - wasn't paying too much attention to the older years - sorry!). I would like to wish everyone good luck but also say that I feel a bit conflicted and wish the current students good luck too because their assessments are coming up and will be equally stressful. x