Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better (Beckett, 1983): GCSE English students’ relationship with failure

<p dir="ltr">The pressure to ‘fail better’ weighs heavy in GCSE English resit classrooms, echoing Samuel Beckett’s famous words from Worstward Ho. However, this oft-repeated mantra, stripped of its original context, masks a morbid genuineness of failure and nothing more. This misinterpretation creates undue pressure on students, particularly in high-stakes environments such as GCSEs. Instead of relying on this simplified version, we need a more nuanced understanding of failure in education. In this blog post I reflect on the negative impact of GCSE English resits and consider the role that Dweck’s growth mindset (1999) has on student motivation, recognising that our response to failure or perceived failure is a choice...</p>