Education Psychology

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Annette Brooke]

That is a very valid point. If the freeze is for just one year, for example, there will be a shortfall in the number of educational psychologists of at least 120. No guarantees are to be made regarding future provision and funding until the Green Paper is published. The website says:

“As such the recruitment process for the 2011/2012 cohort is on hold until we have further information.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some further information on that.

With existing trainees possibly finding that they will not be funded for the remaining part of their courses and the freeze on the recruitment process for 2011 and 2012, there is an immediate and real danger that the university courses will be without a new cohort of trainees for 2011 or the funding that they have depended on from local authorities, and they will simply be unable to continue to function. Students who are part way through their doctorate training may not be able to complete it, and significantly fewer, if any, new educational psychologists will be qualifying and entering the work force. That will be the case in a context where the Government have made a commitment to ensuring prompt access to high-quality specialist assessment and specialist provision. Those two conflicting aspects of this situation must be reconciled.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that, at a time when there is significant and increasing interest in psychology as a subject for graduate university study, and therefore the prospective pool of possible employees in the field is growing rather than diminishing, the urgent conversations she calls for between Government, local education authorities and the universities need to be held? Otherwise, it might not just be a case of people not progressing in their course; we might also send out a signal that working in educational psychology with youngsters is not a good career option for those who currently want to go to university or who have just started their undergraduate studies.

[Annette Brooke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I think the uncertainty that he speaks of is what is causing the greatest concern, because not being sure exactly what their professional future might be like acts as a great deterrent to people entering a profession.

Something that the Green Paper on special educational needs is likely to consider is whether educational psychologists give independent advice, as they are employed by local authorities. Psychological assessment could be provided by educational psychologists in a number of ways, be it within or outside a local authority, but the bottom line is that we will still need educational psychologists. I do not understand the freeze; I hope that we will hear some further points about that.

For the past year, there has been a considerable shortfall in the moneys collected by the CWDC from subscriptions from local authorities. The CWDC has set up a working party to look at ways of ensuring stability and sustainability in funding. The CWDC consultant reported a number of options, with the most favoured being the reinstatement of the top-slice. The cost of training 372 new educational psychologists, with one third qualifying each year, is in the region of £9 million to £12 million per year. An option put forward by pressure groups is a move to central funding. I understand that this would be comparable to the funding arrangements for clinical psychologists who have their training funded centrally. Educational psychology is a smaller profession than clinical psychology.