A theme running through some of my previous Letters from the President has been problems school psychologists (SPs) face when trying to move away from traditional, within child, individual referral models of work. For historical reasons SP services have expanded because employers, by enlarge, require SPs to carry out individual assessments, often using individually administered IQ tests, on children who might require special educational provision. And make no mistake, this core function has served the profession well, providing as it does, a distinctive and unique function. However, important through this function is, over the years many SPs have become increasingly frustrated with the limits that it imposes on our role. Surely, it is argued, there is there is more to the life of an SP than carrying out individual assessments of children who might need special education. Why are we not engaged in more school based consultation and therapeutic work? And why do we not carry out more work in the community? Furthermore, by focussing our work exclusively on individual children, aren't we reinforcing out dated medical models of working and, in so doing, maintaining inappropriate school practices that might be the cause of the children's problems?

In my previous letters I have also argued that there are a number of subtle pressures, both within and outside the profession, that serve to maintain the status quo and which make it difficult for SPs to abandon their traditional practices. Some of these pressures relate to the demands and expectations of our employers and the SPs. Understandable reluctance to challenge these. Others relate to the somewhat conservative stance taken by the professional associations, at least in the UK, and, in some cases, by a lack of self confidence and self-belief amongst SPs themselves. But I do not want to give the impression that all is gloom and doom! A glance through the professional journals indicates that there are examples of SPs carrying out a range of innovative work that is consultative, and where the individual child is not the focus. Hence SPs have made, and will continue to make, a wider contribution than that which is associated with our traditional role. To reinforce this point, in the remainder of this letter I will provide an example of some current project work which is supported by Manchester University in association with Trinity College, Carmarthen in South Wales. This work is funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Science Research Council (ESRC) and this will provide an opportunity for us to evaluate its impact over a two and a half year period.

The work has grown out an earlier collaborative action research project, also funded by the ESRC, in which we worked with 25 schools from three different regions of the country in an attempt to help them to develop, reflect upon and evaluate their inclusive practices. Although some interesting initiatives came out of this research, there were concerns about its lack of rigour and about the extent to which the projects in which the schools were engaged were truly inclusive. This new project is similar to the first in that we will work with a number of schools (six) over a two year period all of whom have expressed an interest in improving their policies and practices in inclusion. As before the schools themselves will be encouraged to reflect on their own practice and identify areas that they would like to develop. The key difference between this project and the previous one is that SPs will play a key role in working with and supporting the schools, and in planning the evaluation. In this sense SPs will be working as consultants with the schools and theirs. and the schools. development work will be evidence based.

We hope and expect that, across the schools as a whole, that there will be a wide range of projects on which they will work. Preliminary discussions with the SPs suggest that these could include the creation of strategies to coordinate the work of support staff for pupils with learning and behaviour problems, the development of anti bullying strategies, making the curriculum more accessible in one of the subject departments, changing break time routines so that this is an enjoyable time for all pupils.

The project, which has only just started, has the following phases.
1. March 2005 - August 2005. The two project directors from Manchester University and Trinity College,
together with two of their colleagues, have invited 6 SPs (4 from Wales and 2 from England) to take part in the study. Each SP has chosen to work with one secondary school with which they have a good working relationship and which has expressed an interest in developing their inclusive policies and practices.
2. September 2005 - March 2006. Each of the schools will work on their first project with the support of the SP and with guidance from the researchers. Some of the evaluations of this work will be carried out by two
research assistants. The schools will be encouraged to be modest in their ambitions and to focus on a relatively discrete aspect of their work. However it will be vitally important for the area they choose to be linked to the development of inclusion in their school.
3. April 2006 - August 2006. Feedback and evaluations of the first projects, begin planning work on the second projects.
4. September 2006 - March 2007. The schools will work on their second project
5. April 2007- August 2007 Final evaluations, report writing and dissemination.

At the conclusion of the research each of the SPs will have supported their schools on two projects both of which will have focussed on the development of inclusive practices in the schools. The outcomes of these projects will be evaluated. Although it is expected that the projects themselves will be different in scope, given their focus on developing inclusive practices in secondary schools, and with the SP being the key mediator, we expect that the findings will shed light on the following:
a) promising school-based strategies that foster the effective and sustained management of change;
b) how to help staff in schools to become reflective practitioners;
c) how secondary schools can improve their work on inclusion across a range of areas;
d) techniques that SPs can use to work as effective consultants in secondary schools.

Finally we hope that the research will demonstrate that SPs can work as effective school based consultants, that this can change the way teachers think about the SPs. role and that, as a result, SPs can have the confidence to develop further opportunities to break away from their traditional functions.

Peter Farrell, President of ISPA