FOUR Hyndburn primary school choirs missed out on the role of their dreams when they failed to win through in a national choir contest which was plagued by voting problems.
Pupils from St Mary Magdalen's in Accrington, All Saints in Clayton-le-Moors, and St Andrew's and Moor End, both in Oswaldtwistle, entered the BBC's Joseph Choir Search.
The winner of the contest will appear on BBC1's Any Dream Will Do tomorrow but unfortunately none of the Hyndburn schools made the final cut.
A total of 873 choirs entered the competition, all of which could be viewed and ranked on the Internet.
But ongoing voting problems led to the BBC's decision to close the site.
Schools were rated by users on a scale of one to five, five being best, but it is thought some unscrupulous parents manipulated the voting system by giving other choirs low rankings without even watching them.
Jill Strong, headteacher at St Mary Magdalen's, said: "It's a big disapointment to us. We thought the BBC would have anticipated this a bit better. Everyone at the school and the parents have been incredibly supportive, and the pupils are so proud of their work."
The BBC said it was surprised by the overwhelming response and, after the voting confusion, decided to scrap the public vote. Instead video footage of all of the choirs was watched by a panel of independent experts who shortlisted the top 20.
They were then put before Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber, who selected Brampton Primary School in East Ham, London, as the winner.
But many pupils and teachers at the participating schools are upset by the way the contest was conducted.
Christine Wilkinson, headteacher at St Andrew's, said: "We are just disapointed for the children really. This whole situation is not the children's fault. They have been badly let down."
A spokesman for the BBC said: "This is our first experience of running a website competition of this kind which has attracted such an unprecedented response.
"Lessons have been learned and this will not be allowed to happen in the future.
"The online vote was compromised by technical difficulties and evidence of block voting, and trust in the integrity of the results may have been damaged.
