Equity of provisions in Australian schools highlight an even bigger problem - how schools deal with anxiety

While public and private sector schools are questioning the equity of provisions being handed out to richer or poorer schools, one psychologist says that schools should be asking an entirely different question.

The article, ‘Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs claim the most HSC disability provisions’, published in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald highlights a misconception around anxiety that is currently prevalent in Australian schools.  Students who have a permanent disability like autism are not in the same league as those who have an anxiety ‘disability’. For a start, anxiety is not a permanent disability; it is largely learned and, as such, it is largely treatable. Unfortunately, when parents see their child behaving anxiously before an upcoming exam, they feel that they have to jump in to fix things. This well-intentioned intervening sends the message to the student that what they’re facing is unmanageable.

Anxiety presentations in students have been increasing in the western world for the past 50 years. In other words, the recent pandemic didn't cause more anxiety; it merely added another layer to an existing malaise.

Rightly so, teachers feel they can’t question a student’s anxious behaviour for fear of making it worse and because they may question, who are they to question a mental health professional’s diagnosis?

While the debate over who gets more money to provide accommodations for anxious students rages on, the real question is: should provisions be being made for students who have mild level anxiety? The problem is that schools are conflating a minority of children, who have an anxiety disorder, with those children who have lower-level and early-stage anxiety problems. It seems that our one size fits all solution is to help them to avoid normal life challenges by making accommodations for the student. If anxiety is largely a learned behaviour, by making such accommodations, are we in fact making the problem worse?

The research is clear: parents and teachers need to challenge young people who present with anxious behaviour and help them to ‘have- a- go’.

The skills needed by students to manage their own anxiety - by using their own resourcefulness - are easily learned.

At the moment, our society is bending over backward to help a student to avoid life’s problems. Feel too anxious to go to sport: Okay, don’t. Feel too anxious to give that class talk; Ok, do a lesser task, like pre-record your talk on your phone. This type of acquiescing – as opposed to challenging them or scaffolding the child into a more adaptive solution – is counterproductive. It will only make the problem worse.

I need to be clear here, there are two types of accommodations at play that, I believe, are becoming confused. Accommodation in a school setting refers to necessary adjustments and supports provided to a student with a disability. Accommodations used in terms of mild anxiety, also known as enabling, occur when an anxious student asks for a teacher or a parent to do or not do something in order to reduce the student's discomfort and make the student temporarily feel better. By including mild anxiety as a disability requiring school-based accommodation, we are allowing students with normal levels of anxiety (such as those experienced during an exam) to have accommodations made for them to face what are normal developmental challenges.  

In the very near future, these young people will be asked to go out into the workplace, where employers will not be making provisions or accommodations for a young person's anxious behaviour. It is ludicrous that we - as a society - are setting up young people to not be able to cope in the real world by increasingly making provisions for them.

The main question that needs answering is not whether one or other schools should be getting provisions for funding but whether some provisions should be being made at all?

The Anxiety Project: Parentshop has been working with the New South Wales Primary Principals' Association (NSWPPA) on The Anxiety Project, a project that will make a significant difference in the lives of children and their families in NSW.

This program will target anxiety with a whole-school community approach, creating a school-wide cultural shift to improve resilience-thinking skills for students, teachers, and parents and help every child achieve optimal mental health, well-being, and educational success.

The ‘fit-for-purpose’ program has been designed by the NSWPPA in conjunction with Parentshop Founder, Michael Hawton to address anxiety in the context of NSW schools.

The NSWPPA is currently looking for expressions of interest from NSW member schools to be included in the project.  

For more information visit The Anxiety Project page.

For information on our Nationwide High School Project Resilience In Our Teens: A whole-school intervention for addressing Anxiety in Australian High Schools visit the Resilience In Our Teens page HERE.