Educational Psychologists
Educational Psychology
Educational Psychologists (EPs) are all qualified at Masters or Doctorate level in Educational Psychology. Most Educational Psychologists have either been teachers or worked with children and young people for some years prior to their clinical training. All EPs are registered with the Health Care Professionals Council (this maintains a register of qualified professionals and oversees professional standards).
EPs help analyse how children think, feel, learn and behave within their educational setting. They sometimes assess a child’s general learning ability and consider any specific difficulties they may have in the areas of literacy or numeracy. They may also use consultation to consider any environmental or psychological barriers which might be preventing them from making progress in school.
Educational Psychologists can advise on how to improve teaching and learning for children by providing practical and realistic educational advice for staff and parents.
Within Doctor Kate we have a team of three Educational Psychologists working together to provide unified and robust assessments and advice. In some cases it may be possible for the Educational Psychologist to gain these insights by reviewing the questionnaires and reports that you submit when you join Doctor Kate. This will reduce the number of appointments for you and your child. It may be however that after this paper-based assessment it is felt that your child will need a further assessment by one of our Educational Psychologists. EPs can work virtually and/or face to face with your child. They may need to undertake school visits or to have further discussions with the teachers in your child’s school in order to collect the information that they need.
The assessment may involve tests such as general ability tests (sometimes called IQ tests) or tests which break down literacy and numeracy skills into their many component parts (e.g. spelling, handwriting, mental maths, number concept understanding etc). They can also use a wide variety of psychological tools to explore your child’s perception of school and their view of themselves as a learner.
Our Educational Psychologists prefer not to label children with conditions such as Dyslexia and Dyscalculia but instead will identify a range of learning strengths and targets for development based on a child centred holistic assessment.