Health Professions: Training

(asked on 14th June 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department plans to allocate additional funds to resource the 10,000 additional student placements for nursing, midwifery and allied health courses that his Department estimates will be created following the switch to student loans; and whether he plans to nominate any bodies to which these funds may be allocated in the academic years (a) 2017-18, (b) 2018-19, (c) 2019-20 and (d) 2020-21.


Answered by
 Portrait
Ben Gummer
This question was answered on 1st July 2016

Health Education England (HEE) will retain the responsibility for commissioning and funding the minimum number of clinical placements assessed as required to produce sufficient healthcare graduates for the National Health Service.

Universities through the combination of tuition fees and additional teaching grant funding, that the Government has allocated to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, will increase the resources available for teaching. In addition, universities can now increase their student numbers, making their provision more sustainable. It is now up to universities to recruit more students.

Universities are autonomous private institutions. It will be for universities to work as part of their local health economy with placement providers to secure extra placements for the additional students. The generation of extra places is a mutually beneficial arrangement between the health sector, universities and their student.

We are seeking views from respondents to the current Public Consultation on how, in delivering these reforms, we look at the widest possible solutions to ensuring high quality clinical placements. These views will actively inform further stakeholder engagement prior to the government consultation response.

Any arrangements to deliver additional places will need to strike the right balance and have appropriate mechanisms in place to take appropriate account of: capacity in the NHS, primary care and social care sectors, HEE workforce planning requirements and the opportunity for growth in the university sector. Alongside, we must ensure that all students have access to high quality placements and receive an outstanding placement experience.

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