ABSTRACT
Educational psychologists have traditionally been viewed as professionals employed by a local education authority (LEA) to assess whether pupils need additional support in mainstream schools or if they would be better placed in a specialist educational provision. Although current government advice (DfEE, 1994; DfEE, 2000a; DfES, 2001) suggests that more responsibility for the initial identification of children with special educational needs should be transferred to teachers, education services continue to demand that the identification and subsequent assessment of these pupils is verified by educational psychologists, certainly where there are financial implications (Beaver, 1998).
