Nursing Courses: Reduction in Applications

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The whole long-term workforce plan is supported by a £2.4 billion investment to make sure that we hit our ambitious targets. It takes into account things like apprenticeships: we want to see the proportion of people coming through the apprenticeship route increase from 9% to 28%. On nursing associates—noble Lords will remember that this is a subject close to my heart, because for my mother, who had children when she was very young, nursing was a route for her to get back into the workforce, so this is something that I am glad to see us now picking up again—we have seen nursing associates increase from 1,000 to 10,000 over the last few years. These are all key routes, which we are backing up with investment behind them.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, it appears that the reduction in student nurses was most prominent among mature students. Applications from those aged 30 to 34 dropped by 25%. Out of nearly 49,000 qualified entrants to teaching last year, fewer than 12,000 were over the age of 39. As someone who retrained as a teacher at the age of 50, can I ask what the Government are doing to attract more mature students to both professions—a group of people who might be under less financial pressure and are able to see these professions as the incredibly important and rewarding careers that they are?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

As I just mentioned, the whole point around nursing associates is to try to attract those more mature recruits as well. As I was trying to show with the example of my mother, there are lots of people who have a lot of value that they can give later on in their life. That is definitely the sense of direction that we are trying to achieve. I repeat that, while people are talking as if numbers are going down, across the field of graduates, apprenticeships and associates we are looking at a 20% increase since pre-pandemic levels.