Psychology Graduate SEN Teaching Assistant
Kingston Upon Thames, South West London
£93 - £98 PAYE per day
Full-time (term time only)
ASAP start
You studied the human mind for three years. Behaviour, communication, regulation, the invisible architecture of how people function. Now you are looking at graduate roles and wondering why none of them seems to need any of it.
This one does.
There is a young person in a classroom in Kingston upon Thames who does not use words to communicate. They might use a symbol card, a sound, a look, or a movement that only the people who know them well can read accurately. Getting to the point where you can read it, where a pupil trusts you enough to show you what they need, takes time, patience, and a particular way of paying attention.
That is the work. And it is exactly the kind of work a psychology graduate is built for.
The school
Ofsted Outstanding. Kingston upon Thames. Children and young people aged 3 to 19 with Autism (ASC), Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD), and Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD). Every pupil holds an Education, Health and Care Plan. Class groups are small, ratios are high, and nothing about this environment is accidental. It has been designed around the young people in it.
The school works within the SCERTS framework: Social Communication, Emotional Regulation, and Transactional Supports. If you studied attachment, emotional regulation, or communication development as part of your degree, you will recognise the thinking behind it. SCERTS gives every adult in the building a shared language for understanding each pupil, what helps them communicate, what dysregulates them, and what they need from the environment and the people around them to access learning.
Surrounding the classroom staff is a full multi-disciplinary team: speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and creative therapists. You will learn from them every day. And because you are with the pupils more consistently than anyone else, what you notice and how you respond feeds directly into the picture the whole team works from.
The role
Your degree gave you a framework. This role is where you find out what it feels like to apply it.
You will support pupils whose communication, regulation, and learning needs are complex and individual. Some days that means sensory-based learning or symbol-supported communication work. For others, it means hydrotherapy, independence tasks, or supported community access. The curriculum is built around each pupil's pathway, not a fixed programme, so your ability to observe, adapt, and respond in the moment matters far more than your ability to follow instructions.
The behaviours you will encounter are the ones you read about in your degree. Dysregulation, withdrawal, anxiety, sensory overload. The difference is that here, you are not analysing them from a distance. You are in the room, and your response shapes what happens next.
Why this matters for where you are going
If your longer-term goal is clinical psychology, educational psychology, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, or teaching, the path to all of those runs through experience. Real experience, with children who have genuine complexity, sustained over time.
This role gives you that. Alongside structured induction, SCERTS training, and daily access to a multi-disciplinary team whose expertise covers the full range of what these young people need.
Most psychology graduates spend their early career years in roles that ask very little of what they studied. This is not that. The question is whether you are ready for work that asks a great deal.
If you are interested in this position, apply now or contact Heeji Moon at Parker Smith Inclusion.