For parents
Information for school: a sheet about your child’s anxiety
A short summary for your child's teacher or head of year, covering what the anxiety looks like in school, what helps, and which arrangements you are planning to reduce.
A4, free, no sign-up. The PDF is tagged for screen readers.
Why a written sheet helps
Schools want to help an anxious pupil, and one way of helping is to offer a way out of what
the pupil finds difficult, such as a pass to leave lessons. That brings the distress down on
the day, but over weeks it can shrink the parts of school a young person can manage. This
sheet puts the family’s plan in front of the staff who see your child every day. It is
for parents of primary and secondary pupils with anxiety or OCD, and it is most useful once
treatment has a clear direction. Fill it in with the young person’s agreement about
what is shared, and give it to whoever knows them best at school.
Filling in the parts that matter most
Keep the first section brief, since “OCD about germs, working on it with a
psychologist” is enough, and describe what a teacher would actually see, such as
asking to leave before lunch or freezing when asked to read aloud. The taper section matters
most. For a pupil with a time-out card for any lesson, it might read “first, card used
only after ten minutes in the lesson; then only in maths and French; then withdrawn after
half term”, with dates agreed with school rather than announced.
What to avoid
A long history of the problem is unlikely to be read and may share more than your child
would want, so stick to what school needs to act on. Avoid asking school to prevent all
distress, as in “please make sure she is never put on the spot”, because that
tends to become another way out.
The Department for Education’s 2023 guidance on mental health and attendance notes
that being in school may help with the underlying difficulty, and that any part-time
timetable should have a time limit. I know of no research on whether a written summary like
this changes outcomes. Its purpose is to make sure home and school are working from the
same plan.