School Anxiety: What Helps - and When?

When a child is struggling with school, it can be difficult to know what kind of help they actually need.

Is this something you can start addressing at home? Does school need to be involved? Or is it time to bring in other professionals?

A recent systematic review looking at ways of supporting children and young people with anxiety and school attendance difficulties highlighted something really interesting.

The type and level of support a child needs may depend on how difficult things have become.

At an earlier stage, relatively simple support may be enough. This could include helping parents understand what might be behind their child's worries and giving them practical ideas and strategies to try.

As difficulties become more established, support may need to involve home and school working together – sharing information, understanding what's making school difficult and agreeing what each can do to help.

And for young people with more complex or longstanding difficulties, a much more joined-up approach may be needed, involving the young person, their family, school and perhaps a number of different professionals.

The review also found that for some children even quite intensive support doesn't necessarily make all of the difficulties disappear and difficulties can persist even after intervention has lead to improvement.

So, for me, there's an important message here. We don't have to wait until a child is regularly missing school before we start trying to understand what's going on.

If your child is beginning to become anxious about school, that's a good time to get curious. What's making school difficult? Is it learning? Friendships? Sensory overwhelm? Uncertainty? Feeling misunderstood? Or something else entirely?  Because the earlier we start understanding what's making school hard, the earlier we can start thinking about what might help.

And if you're not sure where to start, I've created a free School Anxiety Checklist to help you explore some of the different reasons why school might be feeling difficult for your child.

Download the free School Anxiety Checklist

Dilkes, A., & Bond, C. (2026). Key features of parent supported approaches and interventions for children and young people experiencing anxiety and school attendance difficulties: a systematic review. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2026.2642327