Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what funding she plans to provide to Suffolk County Council to increase provision of educational psychologist services.

Educational psychologists play a critical role providing support to children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). However, the department knows that current workforce shortages are a barrier to delivering its ambitions for an inclusive mainstream education system. This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The majority of the funding provided through the Local Government Funding Settlement is un-ringfenced, in recognition of local authorities being best placed to understand local priorities, including investment in educational psychology services.

The department is taking measures to support the flow of educational psychologists into local authority services by investing over £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from this year. This builds on the £10 million currently being invested in the training of over 200 educational psychologists who began their training in September 2023.