Reflect

The event was held at The Art Workers’ Guild, a Georgian townhouse in Bloomsbury, a building lined with dark wood panelling, intricate carvings, and portraits celebrating generations of master craftsmen. Despite the historic backdrop, the focus of the day was very much on the future, filled with insights from neuroscience; a field which can help us understand the wellbeing challenges young people face today, and guide schools to respond with compassion, creativity and evidence-informed practice. Key issues were coping with stress, climate concerns and maths anxiety. Smartphones cropped up too.

It was a day jam-packed with validating material for us at Tooled Up. It reaffirmed what we’ve long been sharing with parents and educators about forming sensitive, responsive relationships with children and young people, promoting self-regulation and active coping, offering nuanced responses to complex issues, and building resilient, emotionally literate school communities.

The day opened with Professor Pasco Fearon, Director of the Centre for Child, Adolescent and Family Research at Cambridge University, exploring the role of responsive caregiving in children’s development. Pleasingly, his talk involved some very cute clips of sheep and elephant mums caring for their babies - always an attention grabber!

Have you ever wondered how our early experiences shape us? Well, Professor Fearon summarised a vast body of research showing that children who experience sensitive parenting (parents who notice and respond to their child’s needs, engage warmly, maintain eye contact, communicate back and forth and cultivate mutually rewarding relationships) grow up with stronger language skills, better social abilities, closer relationships and higher academic achievement. These benefits tend to persist across the lifespan, even when accounting for poverty, antisocial behaviour or IQ.

While these findings primarily relate to the home environment, Professor Fearon argued that the principles are highly relevant for educators: showing sensitivity and understanding can make a profound difference to children’s wellbeing at school too. It makes perfect sense!

Motivate

Professor Van Herwegen outlined the efficacy of some commonly used wellbeing interventions designed to combat student stress and boost learning - mindfulness being one. Whilst interventions of this kind are popular, the evidence for broad, consistently positive effects is actually somewhat limited. In fact, Professor Van Herwegen advised that mindfulness as a blanket intervention should be used with caution. For some students, it can act almost like a negative form of cognitive behavioural therapy, drawing unnecessary attention to existing negative thoughts.

By contrast, interventions that encourage reappraisal, helping young people reframe stress to change its emotional impact, and humorous coping strategies, were more effective at reducing negative emotions and boosting positive ones. It’s perhaps no surprise that changing the way we think about stress, and finding ways to laugh through it, can make a real difference.

A key takeaway from the research is that we need to teach young people that emotions are controllable. In fact, one recent systematic review consistently found that young people who believe they have some control over their emotions experienced fewer symptoms of both anxiety and depression, and could regulate their feelings more effectively. To use the words of Professor Marc Brackett, let’s teach our young people to be ‘emotion scientists’ who are curious, open and reflective about the way that they feel.

Many young people (and adults) struggle with emotional regulation, so it is important to nurture effective strategies. These include moving from self-criticism to self-compassion, reframing situations to see them in a different light, using distraction techniques when emotions feel overwhelming, getting enough sleep and making time for physical activity.

One practical tool to support these strategies is the How We Feel app, created by Professor Brackett and his team, which is available for free. It’s an online wellbeing journal which encourages users to check in with their feelings daily. Over time, they learn the right words to describe how they feel, spot trends and patterns, and practice simple strategies to regulate their emotions in healthy ways. It contains a 'mood meter' with 144 words and definitions and 36 strategies to help with emotional regulation. It’s a great resource for older teens and grown ups alike. Try it out yourself and see if you think it could help your child or student.

Support

Jessica Newberry le Vay, a Climate Change and Health Policy Fellow at the Climate Cares Centre at Imperial College London spoke engagingly about rising rates of climate anxiety among young people (something we tackled in Wednesday Wisdom only a couple of weeks ago). She noted that young people’s feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are exacerbated by feeling betrayed by people in power, a lack of decision-making opportunities, and a sense that they bear the burden of a crisis they didn’t create. In Jessica’s project, only 15% of students aged 16-19 felt that their education is preparing them for a future in a changing climate and only 37% felt that their school, college or university reflected their own values around the environment and climate change. Under 50% of teachers had received training about climate education, though encouragingly, a majority of these did say that the training included a focus on mental health and emotions.

Jessica noted that to empower young people, climate education should be inspiring, relatable and solution-focused. Teachers could provide structured opportunities for students to engage with climate emotions, spend time in nature and contribute to practical environmental projects. Even small actions, like classroom discussions that focus on what students can influence, help foster hope, engagement and a sense of agency. Barriers exist, of course. Limited time, competing curriculum priorities and misinformation can make embedding a meaningful climate curriculum challenging. If you’d like to learn more, the Climate Cares Centre is developing a toolkit to support educators in implementing these strategies, so watch this space.

Have you ever heard of maths anxiety? It’s defined as a “feeling of tension, apprehension, or fear that interferes with maths performance”. This anxiety can impact not only students’ ability to do maths, but also their physical and emotional state. Since the 1950s, research has shown that maths anxiety is widespread; many people who experience it don’t even realise they have a fear of maths, and instead develop habits of avoidance in everyday life.

Studies suggest that up to 25% of school students experience some level of maths anxiety, and severe maths anxiety results in negative attitudes and low motivation towards maths. People with maths anxiety will tend to avoid the subject and achieve lower grades. Stress around the subject has a significant impact on working memory and the ability to focus on maths related tasks. It can also contribute to a very negative self-perception and a sense of failure, which often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the subject is avoided. Have you ever noticed that it is quite common and, in fact, socially acceptable in the UK to say that we "aren’t good at maths", or that we are "not a maths person", in a way that we likely wouldn’t talk about reading?

This kind of anxiety doesn’t just affect children. It can also influence parents and teachers, and it can be a mindset that is learned when it's modelled by those around us. A key focus at FutureED was teachers’ feelings about teaching maths. Dr Rosalyn Hyde presented a brand new report from the Maths Anxiety Trust which found that maths teaching confidence is closely tied to prior qualifications and that many educators experience maths anxiety (particularly non-specialist teachers in primary settings and trainees). To help, Dr Hyde recommended sustained holistic strategies including greater subject-specific training, reform of recruitment and retention strategies and the cultivation of supportive classroom cultures. If these feelings sound familiar, this Guide for Teachers with Maths Anxiety offers supportive advice.

If your child, or one of your students, is anxious about maths, there are numerous strategies that can help. Help them to understand that learning is rarely linear. Some topics may feel easy, others more challenging. Encourage resilience by emphasising that struggling is normal and that persistence leads to growth. Normalising mistakes and using concrete tools, like fraction blocks or algebra tiles, can make abstract concepts more understandable, while visual representations help reduce cognitive load. Once understanding is secure, children can gradually move on to abstract problems.

Collaborative activities, like creating mind maps or posters that showcase coping strategies can help students identify practical ways to become ‘unstuck’, which might include: asking a friend, breaking problems into smaller steps or consulting notes. Reflection on past successes, using humour to defuse stress and visualising anxiety as a manageable ‘monster’ can empower learners to take control of their feelings. Breathing exercises, writing down worries, and taking small, incremental steps also build confidence and reduce cognitive load. Above all, listen, validate their feelings and normalise the fact that a little bit of stress is actually good for learning and concentration. You’ll also find numerous resources for teachers, parents and students on The Maths Anxiety Trust’s website.

FutureEd ended by noting that, ultimately, creating the conditions for flourishing at both school and home involves supporting students’ sense of competence, giving them autonomy to make choices and take ownership of their learning, and fostering strong relationships that provide connection and belonging. When these three elements are in place, learners are more resilient, motivated and able to manage challenges, including stress and anxiety, effectively.