‘Every child deserves access to a high-quality education’

More than half of educational psychologists feel unable to support children and young people due to workloads, according to a recent British Psychological Society survey. These findings come as over 20,000 children are waiting for an Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment in England, and over 4,000 who already have plans are waiting for a suitable school place.

The survey, of 249 members of the Division of Educational and Child Psychology (DECP), also found that 70 per cent felt that children and young people in their local authority did not have fair and equal access to an educational psychologist. One-quarter of respondents also said they were thinking about moving on from the sector or changing their employment model in the next 12 months.

The BPS has urged the government to commit to providing local authorities with ring-fenced funding in its next budget to ensure every local authority has enough educational psychologists. The Society has also called on the government to ensure every school had a named educational psychologist in its local authority, to increase focus on retaining educational psychologists working in local authorities, and to review SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disability) within the wider education system to increase a focus on early intervention and prevention.

Senior Educational Psychologist, academic, and Chair of the DECP Dr Gavin Morgan (University College London) said far too many children had returned to school this term without the additional educational support they needed. 'It's devastating that thousands of children are still waiting for a suitable school place at the start of the school year. Every child deserves access to a high-quality education, but it is well-documented that the system inherited by the current government is currently failing thousands of children who need additional help.

'It is unacceptable that timely access to an educational psychologist is a postcode lottery, and we welcome the new government's commitment to reforming the SEND system to make sure there is a level playing field for all children.'

The BPS also found nearly three-quarters of all educational psychologists surveyed felt they didn't have sufficient time to fulfil their role including direct work with children and young people, supporting parents and carers, and providing consultancy to improve the wider school system. The reasons given for this include having to process record numbers of referrals from local authorities and spending increasing amounts of time undertaking assessments and writing reports for EHC plans.

Morgan said more educational psychologists were needed to help tackle the backlog in the system and to work to provide early intervention to help needs and difficulties from becoming entrenched in the first place. 'This will reduce the need for statutory intervention, and EHC plans, saving significant costs further down the line. However, our survey findings make it clear that the current state of the system means educational psychologists cannot deliver this work in the face of unmanageable workloads, creating significant retention concerns which need to be addressed. Investment in the recruitment and training of educational psychologists is crucial, however, it doesn't solve the immediate crisis of educational psychologists saying they are going to leave now. Training takes time and we need to address the fact that we will be training EPs who will then leave.'

The BPS has encouraged people to write to their MPs to raise their concerns. At the time of writing, more than 600 had done so.

See more information and read the policy paper behind this campaign.