Statutory Assessment and Statementing: Some Challenges and Implications for Educational Psychologists

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Abstract
This article discusses some of the basic issues about the role of psychological assessment in the system of statutory assessment required for issuing statements. These are continuing issues which come to the fore when the procedures for identifying special educational needs and the context in which it takes place undergo change. These are the current circumstances with the introduction of the national curriculum, the introduction of local management of schools and the Education Act 1993 with its code of practice. The article raises some of the challenges which these changes present to educational psychologists. It concludes with a case for seeing these issues and challenges in the wider context of the relationship between educational and other areas of applied psychology, the relationship between professional educational psychology and theoretically based psychology, and the inter‐relationships between psychology and allied disciplines. It is argued that by renewing links with the conceptual aspects of psychology in its wider context, educational psychologists can have confidence in using psychology, even with changes in the psychological service base and role definitions.

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