I HAVE an abiding memory of a spelling test when I was eight where I came bottom of the class.

The teacher gave me a sharp telling-off, yet I was oddly unbothered. I'd always known I couldn't spell – it's still not a strong point. But as the school years rolled on, to that failure were added maths, physics, chemistry, cooking, and sport. I remained serene about this growing list of inadequacies. Perhaps because I was fairly good at certain things – reading, writing, dog-walking – I was untroubled. Also, with the exception of my abysmal grasp of arithmetic, my parents were remarkably relaxed about these blind spots too.

I doubt I'd be allowed to be so sanguine today. Like a vice slowly tightening its grip, the pressure imposed on schoolchildren has increased steadily and dangerously over the years. Doing badly is no longer merely an act of self-sabotage. Thanks to school league tables, every child-sized failure is magnified to reflect the entire institution. And although we live in a culture where a child's self-confidence is bolstered at home and in school with a perpetual and even exaggerated diet of praise, and where the crushing put-downs so common in earlier generations are not just rare but actionable, the expectation on young people to perform well has never been higher.

This week, a far-sighted initiative is being launched in an independent girls' school in London which, one hopes, might quickly spread north. Wimbledon High School has a strong academic record, and yet – perhaps I should say "and therefore" – its headteacher, Heather Hanbury, is introducing a Failure Week. Comprising a series of talks and working groups for pupils and parents, its aim is to deflate the unrealistic notion of perfection many girls hold, and encourage them to take calculated risks. Ms Hanbury believes that success and satisfaction in life come from "daring to fail and daring to get it wrong", rather than being too scared of losing face even to attempt a challenge.

This is a particularly pressing issue for young women, it seems, who can be punishing, not just on themselves but their peers. As Ms Hanbury says: "For high-achieving girls, especially where the fear of failure can be crippling, intellectual resilience and robustness is vitally important. Successful people learn from failure, pick themselves up and move on."

Now obviously, the word failure in this context is relative. We're not talking about pupils in disadvantaged parts of the country where a success story is a child who's been given clean clothes and breakfast before heading out to school, and where teachers have to work doubly hard to help pupils reach even modest academic levels. Yet every child in Britain, girl or boy, and regardless of background, would benefit from learning that not succeeding can be good for you. Whether it's getting lousy marks in an exam, or humiliating oneself (oh, the memories) on the athletics track, learning to cope with not making the grade is a necessary part of maturing. You might even say that to leave school without confronting and overcoming inadequacy in some form or another is to have had only a partial education.

To license failure is to remove its sting. For those who are timid, giving them confidence to try something new or difficult, whatever the possible outcome, is to be a responsible parent and teacher. In this cause, the dictum of Winston Churchill, a man whose career had more ups and downs than a bungee jumper, is priceless: "Success," he said, "consists in going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Better still is Samuel Beckett's credo in Worstward Ho: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

Beckett's motto should be emblazoned above every school's gates. As he and so many great achievers have realised, being successful is defined by a state of mind rather than by exam results or pay grade. Thus, if a child attempts something but falls short, helping them brush themselves down and keep going is one of the most important lessons they'll ever learn. For such children, both now and later in adult life, failure will be only a word, and a small one at that.