Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 16 December 2014 (HL3361), what is the single definition of attrition used by higher education institutions, Health Education England, the Department of Health and the Department for Education to determine levels of attrition for nursing degree courses.

The Department is not aware of one single definition of student attrition across the organisations highlighted.

The Department’s Mandate to Health Education England (HEE) includes a requirement for HEE to reduce attrition rates from training programmes by 50% by 2017. HEE defines attrition in the fields of fields of nursing, midwifery and therapeutic radiography as the “Percentage of students who did not complete within the standard pathway for that programme.”

This attrition metric is completely new so should not be benchmarked to other attrition definitions, such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England’s non-continuation rate for United Kingdom nursing students which has previously been referred to. This high-level standard metric is designed to overcome inconsistencies with other attrition definitions and to measure improvement nationally.