Ministers have announced a £26 million package to train hundreds of new educational psychologists (EPs) over the coming years, to improve learning outcomes for children with SEND.
In the first instance, the money will be used to train 200 professionals during 2026-27.
Further funding will be made available in 2028 and subsequent years Georgia Gould, the schools minister, said.
The promise of additional funding and more support for SEND children came as new figures were released showing the amount of time professionals spend on EHCPs.
The report revealed that local authority professionals spent between 56 and 68 hours on each new EHCP, with EPs carrying some of the biggest burden and averaging 17.4 hours.
However, this varied considerably. Some EPs reported spending up to nine hours finalising each plan, while others said they spent up to 25 hours just on the initial application stage.
The next highest amount of time, at 11.3 hours, was spent by SEND case workers, while SEND managers spent almost 10 hours on average on each new plan. Social workers spent the least amount of time, nearly 5 hours on average, though not all EHCPs require social care assessments.
Other professionals involved in the system included administrators, healthcare professionals and support staff.
Gould said the government wanted specialist staff to “spent less time stuck behind a desk and more time giving the direct support to children to transform their education”.
“This cash boost will mean more opportunity to work with schools on the ground – spotting issues before they escalate, training staff to make sure every pupil in their classroom can thrive and running group exercises that help improve learning for pupils with autism, ADHD and other needs,” she said.
“This builds on the huge amount of work already underway to put inclusion at the heart of every school, including a landmark £200 million to train every teacher on SEND, so that no child is left behind.”
Gould added that the long-awaited Schools White Paper will “make a difference for so many families – embedding more support in every single community and school, so that children get the help they need at the earliest stage”.
One EP, Daniel, backed the government’s plans. He said: “The role of an educational psychologist is to work with schools, families and community partners to create sustainable change.
“Unfortunately, I find much of my time is taken by crisis-driven statutory processes. What would help is investment in capacity, to ensure that we have protected time to do the preventive and systemic work we know can improve outcomes for children.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, 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.
“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, and in which both mainstream and special schools can access the expertise they need to enable pupils to flourish.”
