Learning to fail is on the curriculum at a top private school this week.

Wimbledon High School held its first “failure week” including talks, discussions and activities designed to help pupils deal with life’s disappointments.

Headteacher Heather Hanbury said it was better for students to risk failure than spend their lives wondering “if only”.

A school spokesman said the programme, which began on Monday and ends on Friday, would help pupils at the Mansel Road girls’ school – where fees are up to £4,343 a term – face disappointments and setbacks head on and learn from their experiences.

Ms Hanbury said: “Failure week complements what we do throughout the school, which is to encourage our girls to be courageous and to take calculated risks.

"We give our students plenty of support and opportunities to try new things in and outside the classroom.

“For high-achieving girls especially, where the fear of failure can be crippling, this intellectual resilience and robustness is vitally important.

"Successful people learn from failure, pick themselves up and move on.

“Something going wrong may even have been the best thing that could have happened to them in the long run.”

The week features activities for girls aged four to 18 in the school’s senior and junior classes.

These include assemblies featuring the stories of successful and famous people who have faced setbacks and advice on where to turn when things go wrong – as well as activities designed to uncover how pupils feel about failure.


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