If you have a First Class Honours Degree or 2:1 Honours Degree in Psychology, or a BPS Accredited Master’s Degree in Psychology, experience working with children or in schools, are legally allowed to work in the UK and would like to pursue a long-term career in psychology you may be interested in becoming an Assistant Psychologist (AP) with EdPsychs. You must have excellent social skills, be ethical, reliable and fully conversant with BPS standards and be able to support a school full time in term time throughout the academic year.
APs work under the direct guidance and supervision of an educational psychologist (EP) and they help the EP support schools and clients on an ongoing basis. EdPsychs employ a team of APs to fulfil this role, and each AP works full-time in one school for at least one academic year, and most APs progress onto a second and third year with EdPsychs. The role of the AP is to:
An AP will also work in other roles based on the specific needs and requirements of their assigned school.
The AP role helps schools better embed EP recommendations and advice, helps schools develop their own psychological understanding of students and ensures school resources are carefully and appropriately used to better support children, parents and the wider school community.
The company AP training package has been refined and developed over the last five years by experienced psychologists, SENCos and former doctoral course leaders to provide an in-depth and comprehensive package of support for both the AP and the school. It includes having opportunities to:
You can see the full EdPsychs AP training package by clicking here.
Before you apply for an AP role with EdPsychs, the first thing you need to do is to accurately evaluate your own skill base.
Do you think you will make an excellent AP? Would you like to contribute to society? Are you a highly socially skilled and ethical person who can evaluate people well? And do people like you, trust your judgement and seek your advice?
The people who have the best chance of securing an AP role are:
EdPsychs recruit APs on an ongoing basis starting in February each year through to July. The AP recruitment process has three stages:
You will need to be fluent in cognitive, developmental and social psychology, advance evidence of up to date reading and have read through the EdPsychs website thoroughly.
You will be interviewed by a panel of EPs and APs and they will ask you additional follow up questions to help you further explain your thinking and experiences.
If you are successful in the first two stages (above), we will then introduce you to potential schools, and if you like each other, we will then offer you a contract of employment with EdPsychs Ltd.
The AP roles with EdPsychs are highly sought after. For the academic year 2019-20, we received over 700 applications from psychology graduates across two intakes (February 2019 and August 2019). We interviewed 92 applicants and took on 14 new APs.
We currently have a team of 24 Assistant Psychologists (11 APs, 12 Senior APs and one Principal AP) in the 2019-20 academic year, and we expect to have a similarly sized team in 2020-21.
Assistant Psychologists earn £15,015 a year (£20,020 pro rata) and Senior Assistant Psychologists (who have been an AP with EdPsychs for a year or more) earn £17,020 (£22,693 pro-rata) for 39 weeks in term time only. Principal APs earn £19,000 per year (£25,333 pro rata).
APs can also earn an additional £200 a day for commissioned outreach training.
You will also earn an induction bonus for completing your initial one-year contract and all normal employment and pension rights apply.
APs are allowed to have other forms of income as long as there is no conflict of interest with an EdPsychs’ AP role, and they are available to support schools in core hours (usually 8.30-4pm in term time, but APs can negotiate exact working hours with their host school).
If you are interested in applying for an AP role with EdPsychs you are welcome to apply online by clicking here
Many potential APs ask about the doctoral application process in educational psychology. EdPsychs do not train you to be an EP. This is the role of the doctoral programmes, and you will develop your own practice and thinking about the type of EP you would like to be across many years of working alongside different EPs on the doctoral programme, in local authorities and in your wider work as a professional psychologist if you are accepted onto a course as a Trainee Educational Psychologist.
The AP role with EdPsychs then is about learning to support an EP and a SENCo in a school to better embed psychology within that school and to use evidence based psychological approaches to better support the whole school community.
Many of our APs would like to be an EP at some point though, and the AP role with EdPsychs Ltd allows you to gain experience working with many different EPs and associated professionals on a day to day basis, and it will ensure that you are effectively applying robust psychological approaches in your work.
To date (September 2019 intake) twenty four out of our previous thirty eight APs have progressed onto the doctoral courses in educational psychology, one has progressed onto the professional training programme in organisational psychology and the others have gone onto a range of roles including teaching, wellbeing practitioner, professional coaches and lecturers.
Some APs apply for the doctorate in their first year with EdPsychs, but most successful applicants were second or third year Senior APs as they have developed their skills over time and accessed the full Senior AP training packages (where they often train alongside EPs).
We have a strong preference for recruiting APs who see a career in psychology as a long term journey, where they will gradually develop their skills to make an outstanding contribution to the profession. As such you should really see an AP role with EdPsychs as a long term position.
Teamwork, co-operation and ongoing discussion and supervision are core parts of the work of a successful psychologist. We ensure that APs work collaboratively together for the greater benefit of all. APs help each other to improve their expertise and professional practice, attend BPS events, discuss cases, develop psychological hypotheses with EPs and immerse themselves in the world of professional applied psychology.
EdPsychs will not prepare you for the application process as this is not our role. However, most APs support each other in their doctoral applications, discuss psychology, talk through areas of interest and help each other learn about applying evidence-based psychology in schools. APs can also join our TEP days in January and February where they meet some of our previous APs who are now on the doctoral courses or who have qualified as an educational psychologist.
We are very proud of our AP team. APs seem to find working with EdPsychs, being part of the team, developing friendships, having ongoing training, mentoring and supervision and supporting educational psychologists in schools as a valuable, challenging and rewarding experience and we hope that you will too.
We will be accepting applications for AP roles with EdPsychs from the beginning of March. A link to the application form will be available here at that time.