School asked pupils to vote for the "best looking" students and parents are furious
21 June 2019, 12:18 | Updated: 21 June 2019, 12:23
The form urged students to vote in categories such as "best looking" and "biggest ego".
A secondary school has come under fire by angry parents after they were sent home with a voting form for the Y9 end of year assembly.
The form was shared by concerned auntie Lucy Hall on Twitter, who explained that her nephew came home with the piece of paper and brandished it "shocking".
My Nephews school just sent them home with this - school is hard enough when you are 14 to create awards over best looking boy and girl. Shocking. @HughChristieSch why would you let this happen? Parents are appalled by this. pic.twitter.com/AT4ykiqB2D
— Lucy Hall 👩🏼‍💻❤️🔥💯 (@LucysHall) June 19, 2019
On the voting form, called the 'Year 9 Celebration Assembly Awards Nominations' there are nine different categories to vote in and two 'create your own' categories.
These categories are for children age 13-14 to vote in, so some of them seem incredibly 'off'.
They are: Best Looking Male, Best Looking Female, Biggest Poser (Male), Biggest Poser (Female), Most Irritating Habit, Best Couple, Biggest Strop, Biggest Ego, Best Year 9 Teacher.
The different categories were deemed completely inappropriate by people all over Twitter, and many angered users shared their thoughts on the voting slip.
Some suggested that the categories could've taken a complete different approach, and been positive ones that encourage children rather than exclude some and highlight 'annoying' things.
Why not have things like: kindest pupil, most enthusiastic, most sporty, best jokes, tries the best, most helpful, most friendly, most likely to invent something/ be a millionaire/change the world/be PM.... you know...qualities we want to encourage.....
— Vic (@toria_jay) June 20, 2019
That’s disgusting. Absolutely none of those categories celebrate positive attributes. It’s 2019!! How is this happening?!?
— AM Marketing #DigitalPicnic19 (@ammarketing) June 19, 2019
It's been called "disgusting", "shameful", "shocking", "harmful" and "ignorant" among many other things.
The backlash to the form has been so extreme that Hugh Christie have replied to the original Tweet, apologising.
They said that students should "disregard the form" and that the teacher who was behind the form had been "spoken to".
The school's executive head, Jon Barker, issued a statement which said: "I wish to apologise unreservedly for the awards nomination form circulated to students and seen by parents that has caused offence.
"We will apologise to all students who received a form today and explain why we believe it was inappropriate to use. We have also emailed parents to apologise."
He said the form had been withdrawn and an investigation launched.
