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A Farewell to Perfectionism
and Embracing the “F” Word
Is perfectionism ever helpful? Should
we ever celebrate failure? These were
questions considered by delegates
when I spoke at the 2016 Global
Forum on Girls’ Education in New
York in February. With my fellow
GDST Head, Jane Lunnon from
Wimbledon High School, we shared
our expertise in changing mindsets in the school community to
encourage girls to learn from failure
and wave goodbye to perfectionism.
This Global Forum brought together leading
educators,
researchers,
advocates,
authors and practitioners from across
the globe to exchange best practices and
innovative approaches for the healthy
development of girls, and it was thrilling to
realise that what I had started working on
two years ago at Oxford High, now has a
truly international platform.
This journey from my initial interview on
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to talk
about the concept of challenging unhelpful
perfectionism (the Death of Little Miss
Perfect) to speaking at a global conference of
leaders in education has been an opportunity
to champion a fundamental shift in helping
girls develop into happy, healthy and highachieving young women who can also be
influential contributors in the global economy
of the future.
Our work at Oxford High School has
always been rooted in research, notably that
of Roz Shafran, Professor of Translational
Psychology at the UCL Institute of Child
Health and Professor Erica McWilliam,
Adjunct Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence
for Creative Industries and Innovation in
Queensland, Australia. The concept of
unhelpful perfectionism hampers growth,
both intellectually and creatively, and young
adults fear taking risks or lean towards not
doing something unless it’s going to be right.
This erodes self-esteem or, worse, means that
self-respect is disproportionately dependent
on striving and achievement. It is no surprise
then that this can often lead to patterns of
behaviour such as anxiety, procrastination,
self-harm and eating disorders.
Here at Oxford High, this philosophy is now
embedded within our strategic planning.
Our firm belief in this approach manifests
itself in the way that we teach and the way
our school puts girls first as its core value.
We have programmes to support student
and staff well-being which are designed to
complement high performance, we have a
Happiness strand to our Strategic Plan and
we have introduced a Cognitive Behavioural
Coaching pilot scheme for both staff and
students.
I believe that we must help young women
develop a sense of their own internal
validation. We lead this in school via specific
activities to tackle unhelpful perfectionism.
Pupils reflect on how to be kind to themselves
and grow their self-respect and confidence
and to nurture their sense of adventure and
fun through challenging the norm. We believe
in developing their elasticity of mind. OHS
students begin to appreciate that the further
one goes in academia, the less likely it is
that an answer will be correct or perfect. As
teachers, we design learning activities which
require students to experience the complex,
the unfamiliar and the not yet resolved
answers. We want our girls to understand
that failure is a normal thing to happen in
life and it is how we deal with it that counts
- whether that’s a teacher sharing her (seven!)
attempts to pass her driving test, a scientific
experiment that may go completely wrong,
trying out for a football or cricket team if they
have only played netball before or having a
go at a completely new EPQ topic because,
simply, it’s something they’ve always wanted
to explore.
Interestingly, we are seeing the results of
this approach to building resilience come to
fruition in our exam performance. Last year’s
GCSE results saw 94.5% of the girls’ rated
A*/A last year which was a considerable
increase of 4% from 2014. More important to
me is that a recent parental survey showed a
huge percentage of our parents felt that we
exceeded their expectations – with our care
of their daughters rated very highly indeed.
I ended my talk in NY with a slide of a
floating armadillo basking in a warm river.
Why you may ask? Well, the current buzz
word for ‘resilience’ is now ‘buoyancy’ and
I was seeking to visualise how an armoured,
combative creature will always have a
soft, vulnerable underbelly to protect, and
knowing how to balance both features of
your personality really is the best route to
buoyancy!
Judith Carlisle,
Head of Oxford High School
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