Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to (a) train, (b) recruit and (c) retain educational psychologists.

Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available 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 ambition for an inclusive mainstream education system.

Whilst it is the responsibility of local authorities, as employers, to recruit to their educational psychology services, the department is taking measures to support these services by investing in building the training pipeline.

The department is investing over £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from this year. This builds on the £10 million currently being invested in a cohort of over 200 trainees who began their training in September 2023.

Following graduation, trainees who have had their training funded by the department are required to remain in local authority employment for a minimum period. To support local authority services to recruit and retain their educational psychology workforce, this requirement will increase to three years for those trainees beginning their course this year. This will allow local authority services to benefit from the public investment in training and will support their delivery of statutory assessments and wider work.