An analysis of the organisational constraints on educational psychologists working at whole school level: The opportunity of inclusion

Abstract

Educational psychologists have long promulgated the advantages of working at the level of the whole school. Their evangelising has been complemented by the classic research from Rutter to Reynolds demonstrating that schools have an effect on pupils beyond social and community influences, and that schools can be helped to become more effective, to improve, to succeed against the odds. Most recently ‘primary prevention’ has been proposed as the priority concern of school psychologists, rather than screening or treatment alone.These findings imply it would be negligent of EPs NOT to work – for the benefit of pupils – at the whole school level but examination of service level statements and typical performance indicators for EPs give a different picture. EPs do not spend much time working with schools as organisations, and are apparently constrained to concentrate mainly on individual approaches, with only occasional forays into group work or INSET. Why is this?Taking as a premise that national moves towards inclusion and inclusive practices present a very realistic opportunity for work with whole schools, a survey among 75 self-selected EPs was carried out to identify what strengths (current skills) services already have for working at this level, but also their weaknesses (training needs). Most crucially the respondent EPs were also asked to list threats (constraints on practice), the presence of which might explain why whole-school work was not common among EP services. The concluding section of this paper summarises these constraints and suggests ways for psychological service organisations to overcome them.