Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many additional educational psychologists and speech and language therapists, funded by the special educational needs and disabilities plan announced on 23 February, they expect to complete training in (1) 2026–27, (2) 2027–28, (3) 2028–29, and (4) 2029–30.

Experts at Hand will be delivered through a blend of existing specialist capacity and new staff brought in over time, ensuring the expertise available grows sustainably as the offer develops.

We recently announced £26 million investment to train at least 200 educational psychologists per year, starting their training in 2026 and 2027, followed by further investment from 2028 to train even larger cohorts, subject to a future spending review. This builds on £31 million already being invested since 2023 to train around 200 educational psychologists per year.

The educational psychology doctorate is a three-year course and those who began their training in 2023 will graduate and enter the workforce in 2026/27. Together, these investments will result in approximately 200 trained educational psychologists graduating each year, in 2026/27, 2027/28, 2028/29, and 2029/30 respectively.

We also announced an investment of over £15 million in speech and language therapists (SaLTs). This is to upskill more SaLT support workers and to establish new SaLT advanced practitioners to ensure more therapists and support workers are working with education settings to support additional children and young people. We will also promote the Level 6 SaLT degree apprenticeship to boost the pipeline.