Educational Psychologist Training

This notice is a notification of a market engagement survey that the Department for Education (DfE) is conducting to gain insight for the procurement of an educational psychologist postgraduate qualification contract.

Educational psychologists (EP) play a key role in supporting children and young people, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). They work within the education system and wider community to help in identifying SEND and advise schools, families, and the wider workforce on how to support children and young people with SEND. They provide a link between schools and wider community services such as CAMHs, social care, the justice system, and others, to improve outcomes for children and young people. They also have a statutory role in contributing to Education, Health, and Care (EHC) assessments.

The Department for Education is seeking to procure the training for the Level 8 Educational Psychologist postgraduate qualification, accredited by the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC), for an agreed number of trainees, using suitably qualified and experienced personnel.

The total value of this contract is anticipated to be £32.2m, which would train three cohorts, each with over 200 trainee educational psychologists. The DfE recently announced an investment of £21m for the first two cohorts, however, the final of these three cohorts will be subject to future Spending Review agreement. We are open to this work being split across multiple suppliers. This budget would be expected to fund the full three-year tuition fees for trainee educational psychologists, as well as a first-year bursary payment for trainees, and associated course administration costs. We anticipate a six-year contract, commencing in September 2023 and terminating in August 2029. There would be a period of approximately one year allotted between contract commencement in September 2023, and the start date of the first trainee cohort, in September 2024. This period is to facilitate the Contractor(s) to become HCPC accredited and to become compliant with any other technical or legal standard, and to run the recruitment process for the 2024 trainee cohort.

The current EP training programme has established a strong reputation in the market as a prestigious postgraduate training route for EPs. This procurement offers an opportunity to maintain the high quality of the training and to develop the programme to meet the needs of employers of psychological services to children and young people, particularly Local Authorities.

We are particularly interested in provision which actively encourages trainees from regions with current shortages of qualified educational psychologists, and welcome suggestions to approach this.