The rise in Education Health and Care Needs Assessments and the current crisis in the educational psychology workforce

Increase in EHC Needs Assessments

The number of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is increasing. The proportion of young people (0-25 years) with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) has increased from around 2.8 per cent of pupils 2015 to to 4.3 per cent in 2023.

There has been an increase of 250 per cent in the number of Appeals to the First Tier Tribunal between 2015 and 2022. This is of particular relevance to educational psychologists who are routinely called by local authorities to provide an independent view as an expert witness as part of tribunal proceedings.

The Government has said that they are increasing the amount of money they are putting into SEN provision. For example, they have stated a response to a petition to increase SEND funding:

• £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to support local authorities to deliver new specialist SEND places and increasing high needs revenue funding to £10.1 billion in 2023-24.
• High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding is to support local authorities (LAs) to deliver new places for academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25 and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require AP.
• This funding follows investment of £300 million in financial year 2021-22 and £365 million between 2018 and 2021.
• Hight needs revenue funding for children and young people with complex needs, is increasing by over 50 per cent from 2019-20, to a total of £10.1 billion in financial year 2023-24. This funding is provided to meet the ongoing costs of supporting and educating those who need specialist SEND and alternative provision services. Every LA will see a minimum per-head increase of 9.8 per cent in their total high needs allocations in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23

The additional funding is welcomed. However it is insufficient to meet the increasing numbers of pupils with SEND and parental aspirations as promised in 2014 Children and Families Act. The gap between the funding provided and the funding required is further exacerbated by the factors associated with inflation.

Factors impacting on increasing EHCP requests

We need to consider why demand is rising as  well as how the funds which are available can be used more effectively for children and young people. The increasing numbers of pupils presenting with SEND difficulties can be attributed to a number of factors.

• The legacy of austerity and shrinking of public services, for example through decimation of prevention and early intervention local support services such as Sure Start/Children's Centres, or LA school support services, which offered high quality, local support for families.
• The 'postcode lottery' whereby those local councils which are in financial difficulties are less able to provide support, than other councils whose financial situations are not as acute.
• The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, where the government has not provided the funds recommended by Sir Kevan Collins the 'catch up Tsar' to enable a credible recovery to take place. This, alongside pandemic lockdowns which unravelled an acceleration  of need for learners already struggling with education, has impacted on pupil attainment, as well as school attendance which itself has now reached critical levels.
• The combined effect of high stakes school performativity measures and significant financial constraints on schools' ability to offer the flexibility required for inclusive education, which in have effect promoted narrow curricula and educational provision in mainstream education and thereby an increasingly segregated educational system for those with special educational need.
• The impact of the cost of food, energy and housing means that most disadvantaged pupils are arriving at school unable to learn effectively. There has also been a corresponding increase in the number of pupils who have difficulties with their emotional wellbeing and mental health.
• The lack of specialists such as educational psychologists who provide the early assessment and intervention often required to prevent escalation of difficulties, which means the difficulties become entrenched and more difficult and costly to address. Not to be forgotten alongside the financial costs of  limited access to specialist professionals at an earlier stage, are of course are the considerable adverse impacts on children, young people , their families and schools.

Capacity issues within the educational psychology workforce

The money the DfE is investing in the training of educational psychologists is welcomed. However the numbers who are being trained are critically short on meeting the current and future demand.

A 2023 report from the Department for Education revealed:

• 88 per cent of local authorities reporting difficulties recruiting Educational Psychologists, with 48 per cent citing pay as a key reason.
• A third of local authorities reporting difficulties with retention of Educational Psychologists.
• 69 per cent of local authorities 'not confident' they will be able to meet the demand for educational psychologist services
• 96 per cent of those local authorities reporting recruitment and/or retention issues stated that these difficulties affected outcomes for children and young people requiring support.

It is worth noting that these difficulties are continuing to increase within local authorities.

In addition, the recent pay settlement granted to EPs, in isolation, will do nothing to reduce the flow of educational psychologists and other specialists to the private sector, including working as agency staff.

The Department for Education workforce report states about EPs' movement out of local authorities: "Respondents suggested that this was related to the high proportion of time EPs were spending on statutory work and the opportunity to do more varied work in private practice."

Money which should be spent on service delivery that supports the additional needs of children and young people in communities is  instead  too often having to be used for locum agency fees that LA services have no choice but to pay in response to spiralling difficulties with capacity to meet statutory duties.

This also means that relying on agency staff/locums leads to a fragmentation of service delivery thus further fuelling the increasing movement of EPs out of local authorities and into the private sector.

The DECP welcomes the acknowledgement by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsmen of an increasing capacity issues on local authority educational psychology services and the call for significant input on a national scale.

The DECP also emphasises that the significant input will need to including increasing the number of educational psychologists being trained and remaining in local authority employment, in order not only to meet the current statutory demands, but also to provide the early intervention work required to support the needs of children and young people at the earliest stage possible.

Given the demographics of the educational psychology profession overall and the lengthy training process required, it is important that workforce planning now takes into account inevitable factors around retirement which are projected to reduce the EP workforce in the next few years.

In implementing a much-needed expansion of the number of educational psychologists being trained, the DECP advises that consideration will also need to be made of how to fund local authority educational psychology services correspondingly to ensure that there is capacity for the high quality supervision of Trainee Educational Psychologists on the placements which are integral to the training courses.

In addition, the DECP recommends that a holistic review of the positioning of SEND within the wider education system is required. This will need to include considerations of the additional needs that children and young people experience, becoming more fully integrated into general educational policy and legislation, including in the way that school performance is measured. It will also need to include revisiting of the balance in the relative roles, responsibilities, powers and recourse to accountability for academies/multi-academy trusts and local authorities.

In summary, the DECP shares the disappointment of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman that the foreseeable educational psychology workforce capacity issues have not been addressed sooner, and about the impact of this for children and young people's timely access to Education, Health and Care Needs assessments as well as early intervention and preventative work.

In doing so, the DECP calls for an urgent increase in the educational psychology workforce which reflects adequate funding in all of the areas required to achieve this including university education and local authority placement supervision.

It also calls for a holistic review of the factors underpinning the huge increases in EHC Needs assessments, a review of the SEND system (including its positioning within the wider education system) and for educational psychologists to have extensive  input into these processes.