One student who qualified this September had been accepted for three jobs before he had ever spent a day as an educational psychologist, according to Brian Harrison-Jennings, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists.

Nearly 70 per cent of local authorities in England and Wales have vacancies for educational psychologists, says the AEP, which says there are about 150 unfilled posts.

Ninety of its 2,500 members are due to retire this year and a substantial number will return to teaching. With only 124 training places, the number of vacancies is set to increase.

The problem is exacerbated by pay. Educational psychologists’ wages have not kept up with those of teachers and the AEP says the latest offer of 3.5 per cent, made by the local authority employers’ consortium, will mean more members opting to return to the classroom.

“Over the past 12 years, since teachers had their pay review body, I estimate educational psychologists have fallen behind by about pound;25,000 in total,” said Mr Harrison-Jennings. “That means we have worked one year for nothing.”

Now, he said, many educational psychologists were simply taking their master’s degree and going straight back into teaching, sometimes as a special needs co-ordinator, earning much more than the psychologist employed to advise and guide them.

“We will vote against the 3.5 per cent, though it will be imposed on us,” said Mr Harrison-Jennings. “It will do nothing to help our recruitment and retention.”

A qualified educational psychologist starts on pound;26,100, rising to pound;34,200 over nine years. “That’s terrible pay, given they’ve got two degrees, a PGCE and two years’ teaching experience.”

The shortage is also putting existing educational psychologists under pressure, he said. Two principal psychologists went on long-term sick leave for stress last week.

The amount of preventative work educational psychologists can do is decreasing. Yet the need for it is increasing as the Government continues its drive to raise attainment and teachers worry about indiscipline and rising numbers of special needs pupils in mainstream schools.

Educational psychologists are being used just as “firefighters, damping down little outbursts and providing a shoulder for teachers to cry on”.

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‘WE COULD DO SO MUCH MORE’

Kay Tasker-Smith is not complaining. In her eighth year as an educational psychologist, she loves the work and has learned so much that “it has made my head explode at times”.

“It’s a brilliant job, so diverse and interesting,” she says, “but it is disheartening to feel you are in a group that has been missed out when it comes to improving pay and conditions.”

She works for Wakefield education authority and says her team has to concentrate on its “core work”, supporting individual pupils with special needs. “We offer a good service, but we could do so much more if there were more of us,” she said.

“We can organise in-service training, help with whole-school issues such as behaviour management and bullying. We can teach thinking skills, run parenting workshops, train ancillaries and governors, set up conferences.The impact could be enormous. It’s a huge job.”