Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many full-time equivalent school nurses there have been in each of the last five years.

The latest National Health Service workforce statistics published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that there are now over 7,500 more nurses, midwives and health visitors, including school nurses, working in the NHS in England compared to May 2010.

The published statistics do not include the numbers of school nurses employed by other sectors, such as local authorities, which since April 2013 have been responsible for public health locally, including commissioning public health services for school aged children.

The attached table shows the number of full-time equivalent school nurses directly employed in the NHS, from September 2003 to November 2014.