Nurses: Training
(asked on 10th June 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effect of the removal of bursaries for undergraduate nurses on the level of nursing places filled in each institution that provides such places.
The education funding reforms, which came into force in 2017, unlocked the cap which constrained the number of pre-registration nursing, midwifery and allied health profession training places allowing more students to gain access to nurse degree training courses.
Health Education Institutes (HEIs) are autonomous private institutions and are responsible for setting the number of training places they offer. It is for HEIs to work as part of their local health economy to secure training places.
The Department does not hold information on the level of pre-registration undergraduate nursing places filled at individual HEIs, compared with the number of places they made available in the given period.
The Office for Students publishes annual data on the number of entrants onto pre-registration nursing undergraduate nursing courses broken down by individual HEIs. Higher Education Students Early Statistics have published the 2018/19 data, which is available at the following link:
The Department monitors student recruitment at a national level. The latest published data from the University and Colleges Admissions Service from February 2019 shows that there has been a 4.5% increase in applicants to nursing or midwifery courses at English universities when compared to this time last year in 2018. However, we know that there is further work to do with the education and healthcare sector to ensure that students continue to apply for these places.
The NHS Long Term Plan set out the next step in our mission to make the National Health Service a world class employer and deliver the nursing workforce the NHS needs. To deliver on these commitments the NHS has published on 3 June 2019 an interim People Plan that sets out the action we will take now and over the long term to meet the challenges of nursing supply, including nursing undergraduate supply.
We recognise, however, that there is more to do which is why the NHS will publish a final People Plan soon after the conclusion of the Spending Review.