Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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127. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the measures that she will take, in conjunction with the relevant Departments, to ensure that doctoral students of educational psychology are funded in line with their counterparts' undertaking studies in other psychology fields. [51707/22]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) of my Department provides a school-based psychological service to all recognised primary and post-primary schools through the application of psychological theory and practice to support the wellbeing, and the academic, social and emotional development of all learners.

The NEPS service provides access for all schools to:

- Psychological support in the event of a Critical Incident

- A Casework Service for individual children where there is a need for intensive consultation and assessment

- A school staff Support and Development Service, to build school capability to provide a comprehensive continuum of support in schoolsand

- Ongoing access to advice and support for schools.

This overall approach allows psychologists to give early attention to urgent individual cases and, through supporting school staff, to benefit many more children than could be seen individually.

A working group in the Department has been examining the matter of how the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS) can continue to recruit adequate numbers of suitably qualified staff and continue to respond to the educational psychological needs of children in recognised primary and post-primary schools across the country.

The group has agreed on a number of actions that must be taken to address supply issues in the medium to long term. These include the development of a workforce plan for educational psychologists within the Department of Education and work has begun with other Government Departments to advance this.

A number of options were considered to address some immediate supply issues. Following analysis of these, it was decided that the Department would use some available NEPS funding to sponsor a cohort of third year students of the Educational Psychology Doctoral programme in University College Dublin (UCD) and Mary Immaculate College (MIC) University of Limerick, for the academic year 2022/23 to provide support via a contribution towards their fees and associated expenses. The workforce planning group referred to above will be asked to make some interim recommendations in Q2 of next year regarding any other short-term measures required in advance of their final report. It is envisaged that funding supports for students on the educational psychological doctorate programme will be considered as part of this process.