I believe that Anxiety within schools is one of our biggest challenges. Anxiety is significant and affects many students, but also many staff. It has a massive impact on many aspects of education, such as increasing our student's cognitive load, therefore meaning their performance at school is weakened and their motivation is lower. Anxiety can often be linked to other underlying issues as well and can be increased for many different reasons. Anxiety affects attendance - students (and staff) with greater levels of anxiety tend to have lower attendance at school. This means they miss out on key learning opportunities both academically and socially. By having fewer opportunities to have social experiences, they miss out on those key times in school to learn about how to form "good" relationships, which can make it more difficult in their future to understand how to communicate with peers, partners and professionally at work. Students who do not learn to manage their anxiety, become adults with anxiety, which again can have negative effects, as it can affect the careers of these students after school, and can impact their physical health too. I think this is so important. It is frustrating to see these students fall short of what they are capable of because of their mental health, and I believe these students absolutely deserve to be engaged in their curriculum despite their anxiety. It matters because the problem only ever seems to be increasing and I am sad and concerned for these childrens future.