International comparison — US, Australia and Canada

The four systems diverge sharply. UK: HCPC registration under a protected title, programme-approval based, with no national exam. USA: practising as a “Psychologist” generally requires a doctorate (PhD or PsyD) from an APA-accredited programme, supervised hours (roughly 2,000 internship plus 2,000 postdoc), and a passing EPPP (Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology) plus any state exam; licensing is state-by-state with no single national register. Australia: you must be registered with the Psychology Board of Australia (under AHPRA) to practise; the historic “4+2” and “5+1” internship pathways are being phased out in favour of an accredited higher-degree programme, with general registration plus optional area-of-practice endorsement (e.g. clinical), and overseas applicants generally take provisional registration first — verify the current pathway, as this is mid-transition. Canada: licensing is by provincial/territorial college; the doctorate is required in some provinces, a master’s suffices in others (a genuine cross-province difference — do not generalise), and the EPPP is required in every province except Quebec. The CPA accredits training programmes but does not license practitioners — the inverse of the BPS-vs-HCPC parallel.