Society Qualifications

Welcome to the Society Qualifications homepage. Here you will find information about all of the qualifications which are offered directly by the Society.

Society qualifications differ from other courses because they are for independent candidates who are not attached to accredited/approved postgraduate training courses. However, candidates and their supervisors will need to make appropriate arrangements for access to academic facilities and support throughout the period of training. This may involve arranging library access at local universities and might include buying into modules of training courses.

The Society qualification assessments which must be passed are equivalent to those undertaken on a postgraduate training course. You can find out more information about specific qualifications by following the links below.

On these pages, you can also find details of current vacancies for members of the Boards of Assessors, and for other assessment personnel.

For 'stop press' information, updates to regulations and handbooks, or any other important information, please check the Notices page regularly.

If you cannot find the information you want on these pages please contact the Qualifications Office either by e-mailing exams@bps.org.uk or by telephoning 0116 252 9505.

Qualification pages

• Clinical psychology
• Clinical neuropsychology
• Counselling psychology
• Educational psychology (Scotland)
• Forensic psychology
• Health psychology
• Occupational psychology

Statutory Regulation of Psychologists

On 1 July 2009 the Health Professions Council (HPC) became the statutory regulator for practitioner psychologists and opened the psychology section of their Register.

In the first instance the HPC will approve all of the qualifications which currently lead to registration as a Chartered Psychologist including the Society's own independent route qualifications.

Over a period of three years the HPC will conduct approvals visits to all programmes to determine whether or not the qualifications will remain on their approved list. This will apply to all programmes, including those at HEIs and the Society's independent route qualifications.

All candidates who enrol on an approved qualification will be 'protected' so that when they complete and are awarded the qualification they will be eligible to apply to the HPC for registration.

We wish to reassure all current and potential candidates for the Society's qualifications that when they successfully complete and are awarded the qualification for which they are enrolled they will be eligible to apply for registration with the HPC.

IMPORTANT: The information on this page may change when statutory regulation for practitioner 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. 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.

The Qualifications Team is currently updating documentation relating to Society Qualifications to reflect these changes and revised versions will be uploaded to the Qualifications webpages as soon as they are available. Please contact the Qualifications Team with any queries.