Accreditation - Information for Students and Trainees

Accreditation is the means by which the Society ensures that psychology courses are suitable to support students' achievement of learning outcomes and that they are supported by an adequate resource base. Find out more about accreditation and why it's important.

In July 2009, the Health Professions Council (HPC) took over as the statutory regulator for practitioner psychologists in the UK. In order to be able offer services to the public as a psychologist in one of the seven applied areas regulated by the HPC, you need to complete an HPC approved programme of training.

The Society is the professional body responsible for developing and supporting the discipline of psychology and disseminating psychological knowledge to the public and policy makers. It is still the key professional body for psychology and psychologists, with numerous benefits of membership.

The Health Professions Council (HPC) is only a regulator, with the role of ensuring that the public is protected from exposure to bad professional practice. The HPC will do nothing to further the discipline and practice of psychology; it will not help psychologists develop their competencies and careers, and it will not provide a professional network. That is the role and value of the British Psychological Society, and is why course accreditation is important.

The Society maintains a database of accredited courses, which is published on this website. You can use the database to source information about the courses that are currently accredited, as well as information on those that we have accredited in the past.

Students on courses that are accredited by the Society can be assured that the course’s fulfilment of the required accreditation criteria will have been regularly checked by teams of psychologists acting on behalf of the Society. The accreditation process considers the course content (teaching and learning opportunities) and the resources that are in place to support the overall learning experience.

Useful links

• Search for a course
• Careers information
• Join the Society
• Accreditation criteria, policy documents and guidance notes
• Frequently asked questions

Important information

The information on this page may change when statutory regulation for psychologists is introduced (1 July 2009). Please note that while most of the general information is likely to apply post statutory regulation, the continued validity of specific information cannot be guaranteed. These pages will be updated as soon as new information is available. In particular, visitors to our webpages should note that changes to the terminology used in the Society’s membership structure (e.g. Chartered Membership, instead of registration as a Chartered Psychologist; Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership, instead of Graduate Basis for Registration) remain subject to formal ratification and may therefore change. Visitors should also note that whilst the specific information on these pages is accurate at the time of writing, the validity of information contained within any linked documents cannot be guaranteed. Please contact the QA team with any queries.