Tackling student anxiety

This short guide provides practical strategies to help identify anxiety in students, with example scenarios and responsive action plans.

It gives an explanation of what anxiety is and how it can present itself in primary and secondary settings. It looks at some potential causes of anxiety, such as pressure on students to achieve, and outlines how schools can help to alleviate these feelings.

The guide includes a section on emotionally based school avoidance, delving into the potential causes, impact and providing steps that schools can take to address it.

It also provides further signposting to apps, websites, activities and books which might help students who struggle with anxious feelings.

This guide could be readily implemented by mental health leads for use with students or to share with staff.

Using this resource

This resource is designed for:

• use by mental health leads working with students aged 5 to 16.
• use by staff working in primary and secondary settings.

Learning outcomes

This resource addresses the following learning outcomes:

• Work in partnership with local service providers and mental health professionals (including Mental Health Support Teams where these are in place) to ensure the needs of pupils, students and relevant adults are known, and used to shape the support.