Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help reduce inequalities in access to educational psychologists.

The department is investing around £1.8 billion over the next three years for local area partnerships, including local authorities and Integrated Care Boards, to develop a new ‘Experts at Hand’ offer, strengthening mainstream education through access to health and specialist education support, including from educational psychologists (EPs).

By setting clear national expectations alongside locally delivered support, the offer will help ensure children and young people can receive timely, high‑quality specialist support regardless of locality, reducing variation and improving equity of access.

The department is also investing £26 million to train at least 200 EPs per year from 2026/2027, followed by additional funding from 2028 to train more EPs than we currently do, subject to the future Spending Review. This is in addition to the £31 million already invested to train EPs since 2023.