THE headteacher of one of Oxford’s most prestigious independent schools is waging war on perfection.

From September, Oxford High School is to launch a new project dubbed ‘The Death of Little Miss Perfect’.

Across all subjects, girls at the school in Belbroughton Road, North Oxford, will be challenged to take part in things with the knowledge that due to time constraints or other restrictions, they will not be able to be perfect.

Mrs Carlisle said: “There is an issue with girls and women in particular trying to be perfect and it is stopping them being the best they can be.

“The voice in your head says I perhaps won’t try that because it won’t be good enough, or there is no point in doing that because it won’t be perfect.

“It’s the energy spent on getting the last two per cent when perhaps you could be celebrating getting 98 per cent and moving on, or turning over the page which has a small error in the right hand corner rather than ripping it out and copying it again.”

The school, which has just under 1,000 pupils, already uses the MidYIS test, a so-called “adaptive” test where it is impossible to get 100 per cent.

In the online test, devised by Durham University to assess pupils’ abilities aged 11, questions get progressively harder within a time limit until children cannot answer them.

If they answer incorrectly they get asked questions of a similar or lower level.

Mrs Carlisle said while the test had been in use for a while, for the first time pupils would be told that actually, it was not a test in which they could get a perfect score.

Other experiments already tried out with pupils at Oxford High include giving children in Year 10 maths problems well above the level they would be expected to achieve.

Mrs Carlisle said: “Some came up with 25 per cent, some 50 per cent, and these are girls who are used to getting 70, 80 or 90 per cent.

“This is about being resilient and knowing it is fine to accept that sometimes things are beyond us and you are not able to do that – yet.”

The programme is still being developed for use across all subjects.

In art, for example, children may be given a very short time to produce an artwork; in drama they may have to prepare and perform a production the same day. Mrs Carlisle said: “It’s potentially extremely damaging to think you should strive to be perfect in everything all the time.

“It doesn’t mean don’t aim high, it means get real.”

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