James ZuccolloThink tank

Biography

James Zuccollo is Director for School Workforce at the Education Policy Institute (EPI), a role he has held since joining in 2018. He leads a research programme on teacher policy covering recruitment and retention, workload, pay, and professional development. Before EPI he led the economic research programme for the Higher Education Funding Council for England, carried out macroeconomic research for the think tank Reform, and worked as a consulting economist in New Zealand. He is known for arguing that workforce shortfalls in education — including among educational psychologists — pose a direct risk to the delivery of inclusive education and children's mental health support. He has written for the FT, The Guardian, City AM, New Statesman and Prospect, and has discussed his work on the BBC's Today programme.

References

1. 1.James Zuccollo – Education Policy Institute staff page — Role title, organisation, year of joining EPI, prior career history, media appearances
2. 2.Educational psychologists in England – EPI Report, April 2026 — Research lead role, expertise in educational psychology workforce, health-adjacent work on children's SEND and wellbeing
3. 3.BPS: Chronic shortage of Educational Psychologists must be urgently addressed — Quoted commentary on EP workforce crisis and children's inclusion agenda; confirms role title
4. 4.Education Policy Institute – Companies House registered office — Organisation's registered head-office address and postcode (SW1W 9TR)
5. 5.Experts play down DfE role in teacher workforce recovery – TES, July 2026

Expertise

Cited on

• Adult social care & reform
• Learning disability & autism

Stated areas of expertise

• School workforce recruitment and retention
• Teacher pay and professional development
• Educational psychology workforce
• Children and young people's mental health
• SEND provision and inclusion
• Education labour market economics

Notable achievements

• Co-authored the first comprehensive national assessment of the educational psychologist workforce in England since the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2026), funded by the British Psychological Society, finding a nearly 20-fold gap in EP provision between best- and worst-served local authorities. Source ↗
• Led EPI's response to the DfE Workload Reduction Taskforce (January 2024), arguing that removal of Performance Related Pay requirements was a key step given the significant recruitment and retention challenges facing schools. Source ↗
• Published 'A borrowed recovery: the 2025 school workforce data' (July 2026), warning that recent workforce improvements were driven by a weak graduate job market and falling pupil numbers rather than government policy, and could reverse quickly. Source ↗

What they’ve said

• “A measure that includes settled-status holders would operate not only as a brake on future recruitment but as a charge on staff already teaching in our schools, in many cases for years.”

  Head of school workforce at the Education Policy Institute · Adult social care & reform · 27 Aug 2026 · Reform UK levy on employing overseas staff ‘would harm NHS and social care’ ↗

• “Continuing to fund training for only 200 [educational psychologists] each year will not be enough to adequately support children's needs. A relatively modest investment of around £140m would allow EPs to work more effectively to improve outcomes and break the cycle of burnout and attrition that currently threatens the service.”

  Director for school workforce at the Education Policy Institute · Learning disability & autism · 27 Aug 2026 · English councils need to hire 1,400 more educational psychologists, says report ↗

Source references

1. Reform UK levy on employing overseas staff ‘would harm NHS and social care’theguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
2. English councils need to hire 1,400 more educational psychologists, says reporttheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Contact & links

• Staff pagehttps://epi.org.uk/team/james-zuccollo/
• Xhttps://x.com/jzuccollo
• LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/james-zuccollo-72b22517/

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.