Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will classify paramedic science as an exception course to allow those who study it as a second degree to obtain a student loan.

The Department of Health and Social Care decided, as part of the reforms to healthcare education funding, to provide an exemption from equivalent or lower qualification (ELQ) rules for new students starting undergraduate pre-registration nursing, midwifery and allied health profession courses from 2017/18 to allow students to receive support for these courses as a second course.

This exemption has now been extended to new students starting pre-registration courses in dental profession subjects and pre-registration postgraduate courses in nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions from 1 August 2018. As students on paramedic science courses could already access the standard student loan system, these courses were not included in the reforms noted above, and therefore they do not attract this exemption from the ELQ rules.

It is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care to decide which healthcare courses should be in scope of receiving an ELQ exemption.