Last week APPA led a roundtable with various national stakeholders from all three school sectors (principals and parent groups) and Early Childhood Australia. Following a survey that many of you completed last year, Michael Hawton and Dr Rob Steventon discussed the results and led discussions on how as a group we might move forward on addressing students who exhibit anxious behaviours before it escalates to clinical anxiety.

In November 2019, the Australian Primary Principals Association (APPA) sent to all Australian Government, Independent, and Catholic Primary School Leaders a survey to begin a discussion on anxiety in Australian Primary School children. Almost 700 replies were received.

The survey comprised two parts:

Part 1

Principals were asked to respond to 10 statements. For each statement, six Likert-type categories of responses were provided. In broad terms, Principals responded that:

1. They have many discussions with teachers about students' anxieties.
2. They and teachers have many discussions with parents about students’ anxieties.
3. They have many discussions with colleagues about levels of students’ anxieties.
4. Students' anxieties place high demands on time and resources.
5. Schools are inadequately resourced to manage for anxious students.
6. Most parents do not have the skills to manage their children's anxieties.
7. Students' anxieties negatively influence academic results.
8. Anxious students socialise with difficulty.
9. Student absence from school increases with students' levels of anxiety.

Part 2

In addition to obtaining Principals’ Likert-scale responses (Part 1), leaders responded freely to two open requests:

Request 1: “Without identifying your school or any individual, please provide any general comments you wish to make related to childhood anxiety in your school or in primary schools generally”

494 individual comments were given and were coded thus:

1. Comments relating to prevalence of anxiety: 211/494 ~43%
2. Comments relating to parents: 201/494 ~41%
3. Comments relating to staff: 92/494 ~ 19%
4. Comments relating to hypothesised causes of anxiety: 79/494 ~ 16%
5. Other: 47/494 ~ 10%

Request 2: “Please provide any comments you wish to make in relation to the prevalence of childhood anxiety over the last 3 - 5 years”

Approximately 600 comments were provided to the Survey’s Request 2:
NOTE: As the comments were very similar to those for the first request, an analysis at the level for Request 1 was not applied..

APPA PROJECT - FINAL REPORT

The broad findings and implications arising from Part 2 are:

1. Principals are very concerned about the incidence of anxiety and its increase.
2. Providing for parents and caregivers with mental health concerns is beyond schools’ responsibility and expertise. Rather, their responsibility is to parents’ and caregivers’ children. Nevertheless, teachers’ work necessarily involves them with children’s parents.
3. Respondents’ comments clearly support a view that children’s anxieties are highly connected to many parents’ parenting practices.
4. Parents feel “at a loss” and do not know how to cope for their anxious children.
5. A small number of parents hold that the school (alone) is responsible to improve their children’s anxiety concerns.
6. Leaders report high levels of concern about their own and the teachers’ abilities to cater for significant numbers of anxious students.
7. Leaders hypothesise causes for students’ anxiety at school. The dominant causes that they suggest are:
   1. Parenting practices
   2. Children’s performativity anxiety
   3. Societal influences.

Hope the remainder of the Term runs smoothly. If you have any issues don’t forget to contact your PPC President and turn up to your local meeting.

Your executive is, as usual, here to support you.

Phil Seymour
On behalf of the NSWPPA Executive, Robyn Evans, Ian Reeson, Lyn Davis, Bob Willetts, Michael Burgess, Jude Hayman, Michael Trist, Stuart Wylie, Trish Peters, Rob Walker and Mark Pritchard.