New data suggests there's been a dramatic rise in the number of primary school children suffering from high levels of anxiety which could be affecting as many as 400,000 families across the country. Research for the NSW Primary Principals' Association also shows that almost three-quarters of teachers believe they don't have the skills to help.
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00:00 It was a survey conducted in 2019 of Australian principals and the survey showed us that anxiety
00:07 was a significant issue in about 81% of schools. 91% of principals said that there's major
00:13 time and resource demands on the school and 82% said that the resourcing and the skill
00:19 levels of the staff wasn't where they would like to see it in terms of their ability to
00:23 manage and identifying anxious behaviours. In New South Wales, the New South Wales Primary
00:28 Principals Association elected to team with a child psychologist, Michael Horton, and
00:33 put together a whole of school community change project to help young people through their
00:38 parents and their teachers and their other school staff that work with them to manage
00:43 their anxious conditions that come forward for them. What we've done is put together
00:49 an evidence-based program that runs two years in schools. We have 19,000 students involved,
00:55 1,600 school staff and around 2,000 parents participating. 54 schools, but the interesting
01:02 data, the concerning data that's come forward is that about 6.9% of the population, according
01:07 to the Australian Psychological Society, about 6.9% of 11-year-olds are diagnosed with an
01:14 anxiety disorder. Now this data, through the project, has shown us that the actual results
01:19 could be a bit higher than that. We're using products from Macquarie University and Yale
01:23 University to assess how the teachers rate the presentation of anxiety in students and
01:28 how the students themselves rate their anxious conditions. What that's showing us is that
01:33 the figure could be as high as 19.6%. We believe that this intervention that's been introduced
01:40 in the schools will show us over time that if, with a change in approach by the adults
01:45 around a child and by skilling the children themselves, we can make a difference to the
01:49 learning outcomes for the students.
01:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]