True grit

Duckworth's research has important implications for university admissions. A combination of examination scores, school marks, letters of recommendation, portfolios of work, auditions, and other performance indicators determine selection for competitive courses. Yet, students who look like good bets on these selection criteria often do poorly and many drop out before completing their studies. Duckworth's research suggests that the list of indicators is incomplete. Admissions staff need to know which applicants will respond to a failing mark by studying twice as hard for the next examination, which will stay in at night and prepare for a test rather than go out with friends and which will stick with a task until they master it. In other words, admissions officers need to know if applicants have true grit.

Grit is usually estimated from interviews and personal statements, but the best evidence comes from life experience. Studies comparing students who attended low-income, non-selective state schools with those who went to private, selective schools found the former perform better at university than private school students despite having similar marks in high school. None of these studies measured grit, but it is reasonable to suspect that students from low-income, non-selective schools will have faced more obstacles along the way than students from independent or grammar schools. They will have had more opportunities to fail and start again, resulting in more grit.

Teachers, particularly those in private schools, have become accustomed to parental demands for extensions of assignment deadlines, second marking of examinations and various forms of "special consideration." This behaviour is becoming increasingly familiar to university lecturers as well.

It's entirely understandable; parents want their children to succeed. Unfortunately, they may be ensuring just the opposite. Protecting children from experiencing failure also prevents them from gaining self-confidence by overcoming it. There are no safe routes to success. If we want to prepare our students for life's inevitable slings and arrows, then, for their own sake, we must let them fail.