What does good educational psychology advice actually look like?

Ask an educational psychologist what makes a piece of statutory advice good, and you're unlikely to hear "all the sections were completed". Yet completeness is often what quality assurance ends up checking.

Completeness matters. Advice can tick every box and still leave a parent unsure what it means, a school unsure what to do on Monday morning, or a panel unsure why a particular provision was recommended.

So the more useful question is this: what does good educational psychology advice actually look like, and how would a service know whether it's achieving it consistently over time?

Why the question matters now

Educational Psychologist services are being asked to do more with less. Requests for statutory assessment in England have risen every year since 2015 (DfE statistics), and services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland describe similar pressures. Many teams now combine permanent, associate and trainee psychologists, each bringing different training, experience and habits of writing (EP workforce research, 2023).

That mix brings real strengths. It also makes a shared picture of quality harder to hold. When time is short, quality assurance tends to shrink to what is quickest to check: is everything there, is it on time, is it in the right format?

Those checks have their place. But they tell you about the report, not the thinking behind it, and it's the thinking that children, families and schools rely on.

Eight markers of good advice

Each one comes with a question any reviewer, or any psychologist rereading their own work or peers, can ask.

1. A rounded picture of the child ensuring person centred practice

Good advice describes a person, not a profile of difficulties. Strengths, interests, relationships and hopes sit alongside needs, and the child's own views are visible, in their words where possible.

Ask: would the child recognise themselves in it?

2. Evidence that earns its place

Every conclusion should trace back to something: observation, consultation, assessment, or what parents and school have shared. Good advice doesn't just list the tools used. It shows what each piece of evidence revealed.

Ask: could a colleague follow how you got from the evidence to the conclusion?

3. Reasoning you can see

This is where psychology adds most value, and where it's easiest to lose under time pressure. Good advice explains why, not just what: the factors at play, how they interact, and the hypotheses that were weighed.

Ask: does the reader understand why the child is experiencing these difficulties, not only that they are?

4. Strengths and needs that belong to this child

Ensuring alignment with the four areas of the code of practice "Needs support with literacy" could describe thousands of children. Good advice is specific about this child's needs and how they shape daily life, from learning to friendships to wellbeing.

Ask: if you removed the name, could it describe someone else?

5. Outcomes that matter to the family

Outcomes should flow from the needs identified and describe what will be different for the child, over a realistic time frame. They focus on the child's progress rather than what adults will deliver.

Ask: would the family see this as worth working towards?

6. Provision someone can act on

Good provision says what, how often, delivered by whom and with what expertise - linking back to 'SMART'. "Access to small group work" leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and room for interpretation is often where support gets lost.

Ask: could a SENCO start putting this in place next week?

7. A clear golden thread

Evidence leads to needs, needs to outcomes, outcomes to provision. When a recommendation can't be traced back to where it began, that gap is often where advice is later questioned.

Ask: can you follow any recommendation back to the evidence behind it?

8. Written for the people who'll use it ensuring best pracatice and evidential pscyhological formulation

Families, schools, caseworkers, decision-making panels and the young person may all read the same advice. Plain language, explained terms and a structure people can find their way around make it usable by all of them.

Ask: could a parent read it once and know what it says about their child?

Shared standards, not a shared template

None of this means every advice should look the same. Psychologists draw on different models and approaches, and children's circumstances vary enormously. A shared quality framework that nudges everyone towards one writing style would flatten the very professional judgement that makes EP advice valuable.

The aim is a shared understanding of what good quality advice looks like: something a team can discuss and refine together using one single source of truth drawn down on good practice.

That shared understanding is also what turns quality assurance from an audit into a conversation. It gives supervisors and practitioners a common language for strengths, development and the occasional "I hadn't thought of it that way".

Questions to take back to your team

If your service sat down together with a recent piece of advice, would you agree on whether it was good, and why? A few questions worth asking:

• Which of these eight markers does your current quality assurance actually look at?

• Where do reviewers in your team most often see things differently?

• When did a family last tell you whether the advice made sense to them?

In the next post in this series, we'll look at why traditional advice audits struggle to answer these questions in stretched services, and what a more useful approach might involve and how technology can bring consistency and insight.