Practice Placement Partnership Framework
The Department for Education (DfE) recommended the development of this Practice Placement Partnership Framework (PPPF) to provide guidelines to support trainee educational psychologist’ (trainee’s) practice experiences during their training and to support the quality assurance of placement provision.
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The aim of the PPPF is to support the partnerships between universities and educational psychology placement providers in England and, recognizing the wide diversity in the structure, size and modus operandi of placement services, to safeguard broadly equitable placement provisions for all trainees and to promote best practice. The guidance also seeks to outline the reasonable demands that can be placed on trainees if they are to be equipped to manage post-training practice expectations successfully.
Purpose
The purpose of the framework is to offer guidance and provide a checklist to ensure that all placements are able to support both the universal and specific training and development needs of trainees. It recognises that trainees are placed in services integral to, or commissioned by, local authorities as the majority providers of educational psychology services, and that the day-to-day work carried out by individual trainees during their placements will vary considerably. A key principle is the expectation for person-centred planning of the experiential diet of trainees, throughout their supervised practice placements, within which consideration is given to the particular skill profile, stage of training, and the learning and development needs of each trainee. The framework is not designed to be harnessed to structure assessment of the performance and/or competence of trainees; these are comprehensively addressed by both the curriculum requirements of each university’s doctoral training programme, and the core competencies required by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) and the British Psychology Society (BPS). To support trainee placements effectively, the PPPF highlights the need for a close working partnership between the university training programme, the placement provider, and the trainee. In addition, the agreement complements a range of existing requirements/frameworks which address other aspects of the initial training of educational psychologists, such as university regulations, regulatory standards, local authority (LA) policies, processes and practices, and relevant legislation.
Relevant Resources
The AEP preferred position for Trainee Educational Psychologists in Years 2 & 3 is that they should be employed on the Soulbury scale for Trainee Educational Psychologists. However, many local authorities continue to utilise the bursary scheme, which is a significantly lower rate and causes financial challenges for many.
