Summary
Educational psychologists play a vital role in supporting students’ special educational needs and mental health. Yet, a recent British Psychological Society report reveals that many EPs feel the SEND system is broken and unable to meet students' needs.
Join this week’s School Behaviour Secrets as we join Dr. Gavin Morgan to discuss how funding cuts, high caseloads, and a shortage of educational psychologists are impacting our vulnerable students, and what needs to be done to ensure every child has a fair chance to succeed.
Important links:
To read the report by The British Psychological Society
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Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook
Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php
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Show notes / transcription
[00:00:00 - 00:05:32] Simon Currigan
Did you know that educational psychologists do crucial work in schools helping our kids access the strategies and information and evidence based interventions they need to make progress with their special educational needs and disabilities and their social, emotional, and mental health needs. But according to a recent report by the British Psychological Society, the educational psychologists that work within that system, well, their view of the SEND system is that it's broken, that they are unable to have the impact that they want in schools, and many of them are leaving as a result. Listen to this week's School Behaviour Secrets as we find out what this means for you, your school, and the children that you teach. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My cohost is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential.
Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there. Simon Currigan here from Beacon School Support, and welcome to this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets. This week, we're gonna be talking to Dr Gavin Morgan, who's from the educational psychology service, and he's gonna be picking through the detail of a recent report that was conducted by the British Psychological Society about the state of the nation for the SEND services viewed by educational psychologists. And what it found was, I'm gonna be honest, pretty grim. Educational psychologists think the SEND system is broken, that they personally are losing the value of their own work because they don't feel like they're able to have impact.
They're not being able to do the proactive work that really makes a difference to children's lives. And as a result of that, many educational psychologists are now making the choice to either leave the professional or move into private practice. So Gavin's gonna help us unpick what that means for schools and school leaders and teachers. So stay tuned for that because that's really important new information. And if you're working with pupils with high levels of SEMH needs in school, then we've got a free download that supports the content of this program really well. It's called the SEND behaviour handbook, and what it helps you do is it helps you link classroom behaviours to possible underlying causes like autism or trauma or ADHD. So it can prompt you whether to get external services involved, people like educational psychologists.
And then we can, as a profession, start getting early intervention strategies in place because we know that when we do that effectively, it's better for our students. This is not trying to turn teachers into medical professionals. It's not for us as educational professionals to try and make a medical diagnosis, but it helps us get on the front foot. And as teachers, we are often the people who start to join those dots together from what we're seeing in school to thinking about if there's a possible underlying need. So this guide is brilliant for helping you do that. You can get it free. I'll put a direct link in the episode description if you're listening to the audio version of the podcast or if you're watching this on YouTube I'll put a direct link to it on our website beaconschoolsupport.co.uk in the comments so it's easy for you just to click through and get that guide.
And I wanna say if you're finding this podcast helpful, if you're finding the information that we're sharing valuable, then please don't keep it to yourself. It would mean the world to me if you shared this with colleagues and friends who who need to hear what we're talking about so they can learn these strategies and these ideas and concepts about supporting kids with SEMH needs in school. So please share it with 1 or 2 friends who would find it useful, and don't forget to like and subscribe because when you do that, it prompts the algorithm to share School Behaviour Secrets with other school leaders and teachers and parents just like you. And as well as which, you will never miss another episode, never miss any important information as we move forward. So that said, here's my interview today with Dr Gavin Morgan about the state of the educational psychology service in the UK today. It's my great pleasure to welcome Dr Gavin Morgan to the show today. Gavin is the chair of the division of educational and child psychology at the British Psychological Society.
He's also worked as interim principal educational psychologist in West Northamptonshire. Gavin has also worked as a school teacher in Northamptonshire, and his professional interest include supporting pupils and schools with social, emotional, and mental health needs, social inclusion, and solution focused techniques in change management. He's also spent the best part of 20 years working as an academic and university tutor at University College London where he teaches across doctorates in educational psychology. Gavin, welcome to the show.
[00:05:32 - 00:05:35] Gavin Morgan
Thank you for inviting me, Simon. Pleasure to be here.
[00:05:35 - 00:06:00] Simon Currigan
So you've done some really important research. Well, you're gonna tell us the results about the educational psychology service and the current pressures that it's under in in terms of supporting schools. But before we get into the state of the nation for SEND, for the uninitiated, can you tell us a little bit about what an educational psychologist or an EP does and actually how they support schools?
[00:06:01 - 00:08:44] Gavin Morgan
Amazingly, Simon, that that that is not necessarily an easy question to answer. I've been an educational psychologist now. This is my 25th year, and I've been asked that question many times throughout those 25 years. And I think if you asked another educational psychologist, you'd probably get a different answer. But this is my understanding of what an educational psychologist does. It's a really quite varied and fascinating role, really. But, essentially, I I think we're all about equity, equality of opportunity.
We're trying to break down barriers for for all children and and young people to achieve. In a broader sense, we apply psychology to education and learning. But within that, what we're trying to do, as I said, is to work with teachers, to work with parents, to work with children and young people themselves to improve situations. And we'll we'll apply psychological concepts to assessment and to consultation with teaching staff to try and improve outcomes. So we'll we'll spend a lot of time observing children in in various contexts. And what we're looking at there is is how the child interacts with their learning environment, how the child interacts with their teacher, how they respond to what they're being taught, how they're responding to their peers and friends around them. And that that gives us an insight into how that child is engaging with the learning or what they're what they're struggling with.
And then what we do then is is we we we discuss things with teachers. So we we spend a lot of time talking with we spend a lot of time in consultation with teachers, trying to develop an action plan, trying to develop an intervention that a child can follow, a child can do, that a child can get involved with. And we work with teachers to implement those plans, to work with teachers to implement various interventions, and then we come back and we review things. We involve parents. You know, we we talk to parents. What what is a child like in different context at home? What is the child like when they're interacting with members of the family?
So we're trying to build up a picture of a child in in various different environments, learning environments, social environments, playing with other children in order to develop a a plan so that we can intervene, make a difference for that child. And we go back, we assess, we we leave the teachers to do things, then we go back and we review. So, yeah, we meet with teachers.
How did that go? How was that intervention for that child? Did it work? Why didn't it work? What parts of it worked? So we're constantly revisiting, constantly replanning. I'm not sure if I've answered your question, but it's quite a varied role.
But at the center of it, I think, is this notion of equity. We're trying to break down barriers to children's learning, whether that be their behaviour, their emotional presentation, their learning in different context, different subjects, or how they interact, how they communicate. But that's what we're trying to do. We're just trying to make things better for the children that we're working with.
[00:08:44 - 00:09:09] Simon Currigan
I'd I'd like to ask you a little bit about your role with EHCPs. That's education, health, and care plans. Because EPs do have an important role to play in that kind of assessment process as well. So I just wondered if you could explain to people that are coming across the term EHCP for the first time what an EHCP actually is and and and where EPs fit within that process.
[00:09:09 - 00:11:24] Gavin Morgan
There there'll be various things a bit later on in our in our conversation perhaps I want to talk about with regards EHCPs and some of the problems and tensions within that process. But, essentially, if after some intervention from an educational psychologist and others, a child isn't making sufficient progress, then what usually happens is the school can apply to their local authority for an education health and care plan assessment. Okay? So and that goes to a panel. The school will provide lots of paperwork. A panel is convened that looks all the different evidence that a school is sending in. Quite often, an educational psychologist will sit on that panel along with teacher representatives and members of the local authority.
They'll look through all the different evidence for that particular child, and they'll make a decision as to whether or not an assessment should go ahead. And if the answer is yes, then the local authority will let the school know, let the parents know that this assessment is going ahead, and various professionals are involved will be asked to write a report as part of the assessment. And always, there'll be a request to a local authority educational psychologist to, be part of that assessment process. And we we would do similar to what I just outlined really in terms of the kind of assessment plan that we would do in a school. So we would make an appointment to go into a school. We would meet with parents, first and foremost, get their perspective on on the situation, the concern that's going on. We would meet with teachers again, do lots of assessment work directly with the child perhaps, do lots of observations from in the child in different contexts, and then we would write up our report.
And that would then go back to local authority. So they would then collate all the different reports that they've got. And then members of the, student assessment team or educational health and care plan team would then bring all that evidence together and write the plan for that child based on the evidence of professionals, including education psychologists. And part of our plan, the advice that we write would be to make recommendations for resourcing, support, and what that would look like. We we would we would specify what that child would need in order for them, to, as I said earlier, have that equality of opportunity to have a fair chance of succeeding.
[00:11:25 - 00:12:01] Simon Currigan
And as you said, I'm asking because later in the interview, we're gonna see how the workload around the EHCPs as well affects how EPs are working in school. So the BPS, the British Psychological Society, have done some research around how EPs view the current state of the nation of SEND, children's special educational needs and disabilities in school, and how that affects the way EPs feel about their work and the impact that they're able to have. And that's gonna form the thrust of our conversation. So what did you find?
[00:12:02 - 00:13:59] Gavin Morgan
Well, we found quite a disillusioned workforce, really. We found that lots of educational psychologists felt that they couldn't do the job as effectively as they would hope and that they felt pretty overwhelmed. A lot of educational psychologists felt a bit disillusioned, a bit stretched, a bit stressed, and not able to apply the psychology that I've been kind of outlining in my first couple of answers to you. This has been a long time coming, really. And, you know, perhaps none of this will be surprising to you or or to people that are listening to the podcast today, but we've really struggled with austerity cuts to local authority budgets. And this is resulting in in where we are at the moment. So over the last 10, 15 years, as we know, local authority budgets have been cut and and been subject to austerity, measures really.
And and this has impacted, a lot of what we can do as educational psychologists. And 1 of the ways in which some local authorities have, tried to kind of plug the shortfall in funding is to begin trading work with with schools. So many schools now are having to buy time from their educational psychologist. So what used to be given free at the point of delivery is now, in many local authorities, being charged for. So schools make the decision.
Where do we spend our money? Can we afford to to get an education psychologist in to come and work with our teachers and our pupils? And we think there's ethical questions about about that, whether that's appropriate or not. But this has led to many tough decisions from schools. But it hasn't it hasn't led to any less demand on our services. So for some schools, often, the only way that they can get to see an educational psychologist is to make a request for an EHCP. Sometimes schools have bypassed that initial consultation with their education psychologists because we haven't got a traded agreement with them.
[00:13:59 - 00:14:17] Simon Currigan
I should just say, if we just unpack that a little bit, why that is. And it's because the local authority has a legal duty to respond with EP support when a school makes an application for an EHCP, but that legal duty doesn't sort of stand beforehand. Is that correct?
[00:14:17 - 00:16:39] Gavin Morgan
That's right. Yes. Once an education, health, and care plan assessment has been undertaken, that's a legal duty. The local authority must then commission an educational psychologist to to do the assessment. The bit before that, the the the traded agreement, the the the discussions that we have with schools, that isn't legally bound. So, you know, theoretically, schools do not have to do that. But this comes into part of what I was saying about our research that we've done with our members and where some of the frustration is coming from with with with the current way in which we are working.
We're not able to intervene. We're not able to provide that level of support that we would like to do. Because as I explained when I was talking about what an educational psychologist does, if we're able to get into schools early, then we can intervene. We can provide support to teachers, parents, and schools before the problems become entrenched. If you if you take that away, the difficulties then begin to escalate. We're not able to provide the intervention and support to our teachers. So instead, then the schools are making the request for at at that statutory level.
So the problems have become really quite profound by that point. I mean, as I said earlier, I mean, I've been an education psychologist for 25 years. And in my early days of of being an EP, I would say that I'd kind of fail somehow if any of my cases went to that kind of statutory level because I wasn't able to provide the support and guidance and advice to schools for them to try and, you know, ensure that child could achieve without needing to get additional help and support. So, you know, I was always quite upset if a case ever did go to that statutory level. But what we're finding now, the schools are doing that right from the start. Parents are making requests too. I should have added that really. That yeah.
Parents can make requests to local authorities for the child to be assessed for an EHCP as well. So all these requests are coming in. The education psychologist and local authority is is is feeling quite overwhelmed. We're not able to provide the early intervention, and instead, what we're doing is advice for EHC plans. It's an important part of our role, and there's no denying that, and every educational psychologist would would acknowledge that. But where the frustration lies, I think, is is that it's quite a reactive way to work, and it's not providing that level of support intervention that we would hope could be in place before we got to that stage when a school or parent has made a request for a plan.
[00:16:39 - 00:16:57] Simon Currigan
So I should imagine then as an EP, what you're seeing is lots of, kind of inverted commas, "emergency cases" because schools are unable to get that early intervention support that they needed maybe 18 months, 2 years ago because of the way the system's been set up. Is that correct?
[00:16:58 - 00:17:41] Gavin Morgan
That's absolutely right. And that is at the heart of of the frustration that we've got from our workforce survey. And this is lead leading to a really disillusioned shrinking workforce. Because what we're also finding that a lot of local authority educational psychologists are leaving the profession. They're going into private practice, perhaps where they can provide that level of support, where they can provide that early intervention. So you've got a shrinking local authority workforce, more requests coming in for for EHC assessments at the same time as as fewer psychologists to do those. So it's kind of like a perfect well, an imperfect storm, really.
And there's more work coming on a ever shrinking local authority educational psychology service.
[00:17:42 - 00:17:46] Simon Currigan
What's then the impact of that on the kids that are left in school?
[00:17:46 - 00:19:25] Gavin Morgan
It's hard. I mean and, again, that's our motivation as far as when I'm describing how we work and how we want to work. But, yeah, the the impact on kids is a lot of them are not able to access the support that they need, that they're not able to get the plans in a timely way. Huge backlogs are building up in in many local authorities. So the need is there for that particular child. They're they're not able to have the assessment done in a timely manner. So, again, problems become more and more entrenched, more and more difficult to extract.
And, ideally, if we're able to get into schools early, we can provide that level of support so that we don't need these assessments and plans in the first place. So, ultimately, it's absolutely the children and young people that are struggling. Teachers are then struggling because they're not able to get support in their classrooms to help them on a daily basis to help differentiate work or provide support or whatever that individual child might need. Therefore, parents are also becoming dissatisfied as well because the the the child isn't getting the support that the parents know they need. So, yes, it's a tough time, really, to be an educational psychologist. And at at the heart of this, the impact on children is really quite significant. I mean, something else that our survey picked up was that this varies throughout the country.
There are some areas of the country where these these difficulties aren't so pronounced, and there's many, local authorities where it's really quite tough, it's really quite severe. And the amount of educational psychologists that they've got to deal with the backlog, to deal with all the support that the children need, that, you know, that they haven't got enough psychologists to to do that. So it does vary. And, you know, some of our concerns are that it's it's a bit of a postcode lottery, again, which is unfair.
[00:19:26 - 00:19:57] Simon Currigan
I should imagine as well, and I've personally seen this played out in schools that what you end up with because of that shortage of EPs, you get schools and parents saying, we need an EP. We need an EP. So when an EP turns up, what happens is they probably vent their frustrations at the EP service. So you got an EP who personally wants to do their best and cares about having an impact, having to defend the shortages, and that just creates more pressure and less work satisfaction and and and and it is pushing people away as well.
[00:19:57 - 00:20:37] Gavin Morgan
Absolutely right. Totally agree. And I think a good educational psychologist, it's all about building that rapport. It's all about building that relationship with whoever we're working with, whether that be the child, a teacher, or a parent. We want to build positive relationships. That that's part of what we do. And, yeah, you're quite right.
Quite often, we will go into schools, and we we are then the face of a local authority. So quite rightly, you know, parents, teachers will vent their frustration at us, and that's not how we want to work. And, again, that's not the most effective way to try and improve outcomes for for children and young people that that we're working with, but that can happen. And, again, it's not a healthy system.
[00:20:37 - 00:20:50] Simon Currigan
How does the way the current system works then around EHC assessments and plans, how does that contibute... I mean, we've touched a bit, but how specifically does it contribute to the workload of an educational psychologist?
[00:20:50 - 00:22:35] Gavin Morgan
Again, that it it varies throughout the country, and, again, our survey is pick is picking up on that. And there there are some local authorities where they're not traded, where they still are providing a free service. And we we we've got some evidence to suggest that if that happens, then the local authority educational psychology services are happier. You know, we we we've got evidence to say that they have fewer recruitment and retention problems if they're not traded. But what's happening at the moment, many local authorities have completely stopped any traded work or any early intervention work, and they've got their ever decreasing psychologists working on backlogs. And and for many local authorities, that that can be several months, years where the the request has come in. So local authorities is breaking the law effectively because they've got a limited time in which to undertake these assessments.
So a lot of services have completely stripped back their psychologists too, and instead, they're just trying to chip away at this ever growing backlog of statutory cases. And, again, our frustration there is there's no psychology. There's no intervention. We're just dealing with problems that have become entrenched and frustrated parents, frustrated teachers, and, you know, and children that are also at the center of this that that are struggling. So for many local authority education psychologists, it's all they're doing. Their their their entire working day is spent chipping away at this backlog, and that's leading to a lot of frustration from many psychologists. And, again, our survey picked up on that many local authorities therefore looking at alternative ways of working in order for them to get that job satisfaction.
And, you know, the the reason that they came into the profession in the first place to to make a difference.
[00:22:36 - 00:23:08] Simon Currigan
I'm just thinking about my daughter at this point is she's doing her a levels, and she's been going to university open days actually to look at doing psychology degrees, and educational psychology is one of the things that's coming up. I can imagine on the one hand that if they're telling her come into educational psychology to be proactive and make a real difference, because that's an attractive message. On the other hand, being told come into educational psychology to chip away a bureaucratic backlog, it's less attractive so, you know, you can see how that would affect the motivation of someone who's in there because they they wanna work with kids. That's what they care about. They wanna make a difference.
[00:23:08 - 00:23:52] Gavin Morgan
Absolutely. And, you know, I I as you said in introduction to me, I've I've I've spent the best part of 20 years now actually teaching, you know, training psychologists, training educational psychologists into wonderful evidence based interventions that we know can work, we know can make a difference. And yet they often then go out into the workforce, and and the reality is totally different. But, you know, I would encourage you to to pursue a career, certainly in education psychology. It's a wonderful profession. But at the moment, thing things are are pretty tough for us. I talk to our trainees and we give them so many rich resources and ideas and and concepts in which to try out in schools.
But the the reality is currently different to that. But, you know, tell your daughter to persist.
[00:23:55 - 00:24:30] Simon Currigan
So, I mean, you started talking about how some local authorities have moved towards trading or try to avoid having a trading wing to their EP service. You're calling for every school to have access to an EP in a way that's free at the point of delivery. What are the implications there? How would that change the current system? Some schools are paying for that traded works. Some local authorities aren't. How does that shake out in kind of a practical way in terms of how the EPS, the educational psychology system work?
[00:24:31 - 00:26:33] Gavin Morgan
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the key calls that we're making from the British Psychological Society that every school should have a linked local authority, education psychologist, free at a point of delivery. And that's how it used to be, you know, just a few years ago. We we also think that there's question marks about the ethics of traded work and schools being asked to pay for support services for their most needy children. You know, that's that's probably a topic for another podcast. And and we also think that if support then is free, then there'd be there'd be no need for for schools to need to then pay for support services. And, again, the this, we would hope, would then lead to, a decrease in in the problems the local authorities have with retention of More more educational psychologists would be happy to stay in in their local authorities because their work diet is is gonna be different.
They're able to get involved in schools. They're able to get involved in those early interventions. They're able to make a difference. So that's kinda central to to our proposition, really. I mean, alongside that as well, it's a it's a separate argument, but we think there needs to be, dramatic increase in the amount of education psychologists that are trained. So So there need there needs to be more of us. I mean, there needs to be lots more trainee education psychologists that then become qualified education psychologists that then stay in local authorities.
And if we can make local authority work the attractive proposition that it once was, then, you know, we would hope that far fewer educational psychologists would then think of leaving or going into private practice because they will be able to to provide that level of support that they find so motivating and so rewarding. So that's, you know, the the the two of our kind of central asks, really. Free education psychology service, free at the point of delivery, no need for schools to trade, and no need for schools to buy support, and there have to be more education psychologists coming into the workforce. To to us, that that would be two ways in which we can we can begin to solve this kind of deeply entrenched problem that we've got at the moment.
[00:26:33 - 00:27:17] Simon Currigan
Well, I'm gonna try to be fair to local authorities here and because I used to work for a local authority. I used to work for Birmingham. And a long time ago, they're I mean, easily 10, 15 years ago, their educational psychology service became traded. And that was just down to money. I think at the local authority, the funds were already sort of being whittled away. So they didn't do it as a strategic choice of what a good e you know, educational psychology service looked like. It it was about brass tacks and making the the bank account add up.
So are we talking about here funding it from, central government or more government spending being delegated down to local authorities? Is is that kind of where you're going with this?
[00:27:17 - 00:28:25] Gavin Morgan
Yeah. I mean, again, if you go back sort of 10, 15 years, it's that's probably an unintended consequence. I I don't think maybe, you know, Birmingham City Council would have anticipated that 10, 15 years later, once they gone into that kind of traded model that, you know, this would be a result. But, yeah, I think to us, it's, you know, it's really quite important that the support is free. This traded relationship isn't there and and that it doesn't need to be looking at balance sheets. And and but what what what is important is is making a difference for all children hanging people wherever they live, whether they live in Birmingham or any any part of the country. And it shouldn't be down to the decisions of of local authorities.
I mean, what we're asking for, I think, ultimately, is ring fenced funding, whether that comes from central government or or local government. Yeah. That that that's questions maybe for the politicians to to answer. But I think there's an argument for SEND funding to be prioritized and for this funding to be ring fenced and and for the DFE, the government to say, you need to spend this money on employing educational psychologists and giving support free at the point of delivery. So, therefore, you can have, you know, that that level of support that you used to get. And, of
[00:28:25 - 00:28:39] Simon Currigan
course, if you spend that money in early intervention, then you see the results. If you don't spend that work on the sort of the proactive side, then you spend a lot more money down the line on being reactive with entrenched issues as the they've spoken about.
[00:28:40 - 00:29:03] Gavin Morgan
It's it's investing to save. If you can intervene early, you can provide that level of support before the problems become entrenched. You will save money later on. You will you will prevent children from becoming excluded, not attending school, getting involved in crime, and all those issues that can happen where support isn't there in the first place. So early intervention, just, you know, invest to save is at the heart of everything that we're trying to say, really.
[00:29:04 - 00:29:21] Simon Currigan
So I'm guessing I know what you're gonna say, but if you had the opportunity to go down to the department for education and speak to a govern government official about the state of the SEND system as it relates to educational psychologists, what would be your key message to them?
[00:29:22 - 00:30:20] Gavin Morgan
The key message to say is that these children are the most needy in our schools, most needy in our society. So, therefore, it needs to be a key government priority.
SEND isn't an option. And at the moment, it is with with some local authorities and some schools. It shouldn't be considered like that. So that you know, these children need as much support as as they can get. So if I was talking to Bridget Phillipson, that's kind of what I would be arguing. One key way to improve situations is to invest a little, to save a lot, give schools back their link educational psychologists in the local authority. We can then work with teachers, work with parents, work with children together.
What I'm saying about that kind of building, that kind of communication, and that alliance together to try and solve problems, stop them becoming entrenched in the first place, and then needing to pay more, having all the societal problems later on of of children not attending schools. So that's what it boils down to.
[00:30:20 - 00:31:04] Simon Currigan
Gavin, these are pretty stark findings from your report. But I think it's important that teachers and school leaders hear what you're finding on the ground talking to EPs and about the way they're viewing the system as well. Because, actually, we're probably all agreeing that something needs to be done. And I don't think the voice from the EPS gets heard enough really because you you're an important player in that whole SEND system. So thank you for bringing that to light today with us. I wanna end on a more positive note. I'd like to ask you, and we ask this of every guest that comes on the show, who's the key figure or what's the key book that you've read that influenced your approach to working with kids that had the biggest impact on you?
[00:31:04 - 00:32:47] Gavin Morgan
Yes. Let's do end on on a positive. And, you know, that's what we're all about. We're all about positivity. We're all about working on what works and and and finding solutions. So that's probably why you don't hear from us because we don't like to complain. We like things to work.
We like things to be successful. And, again, that's kind of where I've come from right from when when I began training, really. This kind of notion of growth mindset that things aren't fixed, that a child isn't an IQ, a child a child's intelligence isn't set. We can make a difference. And going back to when I trained, you asked me about the kind of influential people and it was the people that trained me really, that opened my eyes, and that made me see educational psychology for what I think it is, which is making a difference, which is being solution focused. So, you know, a lot of the work and research I've done and all the inspirational text I've read have come from that kind of framework of of educational psychology, that solutions are there, that we're not trying to find problems. We're not trying to identify difficulties.
We're trying to discover what is working. We're trying to make a difference. Once we've got that, once we can find a little bit of positivity in any situation, we can make a difference. So it's it you know, my overriding kind of guidance in education psychology has always been that those kind of solution focused approaches, really. Working with people, building those relationships, trying to make a difference with everybody that we're working with. So apologies for the doom and gloom over the last half an hour. That isn't what we're about.
We're about positivity. We're about growth mindset. We're about making a difference. We're just frustrated that at the moment, we can't do that.
[00:32:48 - 00:32:58] Simon Currigan
We're gonna face the realities of where we are if you're gonna make a difference, and I think you've ended on a positive note there. So on behalf of all our listeners, Gavin, thank you for being on the show today.
[00:32:58 - 00:32:59] Gavin Morgan
Thank you so much.
[00:32:59 - 00:34:09] Simon Currigan
And that was Dr Gavin Morgan from the educational psychology service talking about the current state of the SEND system and how that impacts on EP's ability to do the important, you know, proactive work that really makes a difference to children's lives and how they feel about the impact of their work. If you wanna know more about the research that Gavin was referring to in the interview, I'll put a direct link in the show notes. If you're listening to the audio version of the podcast, all you have to do is tap on the episode description, and you'll be able to go straight through a link to the research itself. Or if you're watching on YouTube, I will put a direct link in the comments so you can click through there. I hope you found this week interesting and useful. It's really interesting, I think, to talk to someone like Gavin to understand that the decisions made at central government and local authority level about money and spending and how they structure our services make a real difference to the kind of support that we're able to access for our kids, our students on the ground. Thank you for listening.
My name's Simon Currigan, and I can't wait to see you next time on next week's School Behaviour Secrets.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
