The Department for Education has announced that £26 million is to be spent training hundreds more educational psychologists amid fears about schools facing a shortage of support.

The government has said the funding will train at least 200 people per year in 2026 and 2027 as part of a drive to embed more support “in every single community and school”.

The spending pledge comes amid concern that specialist staff time is being taken up by the administrative tasks related to the production of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) at the expense of supporting children and young people.

A report published by the DfE today says that educational psychologists and principal educational psychologists are spending an average of 17.4 hours working on each EHCP.

Schools minister Georgia Gould said today that the schools White Paper will make sure that “specialists spend less time stuck behind a desk and more time giving the direct support to children to transform their education”.

More educational psychologists

The DfE said the £26 million announced today will be followed by additional funding in 2028 “to train more education psychologists than we currently do”. Funding from 2029 onwards will be subject to the next spending review, the DfE added.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “We have long sounded the alarm about shortages of specialists who play a vital role in supporting children with additional needs, including both educational psychologists and speech and language therapists.

“The upcoming White Paper provides the ideal opportunity to set out how the government intends to rebuild these crucial services. Access to educational psychologists will be particularly important in delivering on the government’s stated vision of a system in which children’s needs are identified and supported earlier.”

Mr Whiteman added that it is crucial the government’s plans are supported by significant investment “to not only address workforce challenges but also end the unfair postcode lottery when it comes to both access to SEND specialists and funding”.

Tes reported last week that the government wants to ensure schools can call upon specialist support to help meet children’s needs.

Sir Kevan Collins, the DfE’s lead non-executive board member, told a conference in Leeds that the government wants to see “specialists at hand” so that “speech and language therapists and occupational therapists are available when the school needs them, not after some awful adversarial process”.

EHCP research

Research published by the DfE today shows that local authority staff spend more than 50 hours on the development of support plans for every education, health and care plan (EHCPs).

The research estimates that together, local authority professionals spend between 56 and 68 hours on the development and issuing of each new plan.

The research has been published ahead of the government announcing its White Paper and SEND reforms.

There have been concerns that the government’s reforms could result in a reduction in EHCPs in the future or children’s rights being affected.

Last year Tes revealed that the government was considering whether EHCPs were the “right vehicle” to use to provide support.

Ms Gould has said that there will always be a legal right to additional support in education.

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