Nurses: Training

(asked on 7th September 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department will take to monitor the number of UCAS applications for nursing courses in the next two years; and what contingency planning his Department has undertaken to address any reduction in the number of such applications in that period.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 16th September 2016

The changes to healthcare education funding from August 2017 means that we can move away from centrally imposed controls on numbers of nurses being trained and financial limitations, enabling universities to increase nurse training places by the end of the parliament, 2020.

As now, ensuring that all students have access to high quality placements and receive an outstanding placement experience is a key priority.

Having a stable placement commissioning system is important for workforce supply and for Higher Education Institutes; therefore Health Education England (HEE) will retain responsibility for commissioning the minimum number of placements for 2017/18. Universities will be free to create additional places on top of these in partnership with their local trusts and will have their HEE-funded placements maintained at existing levels.

The Government is committed to monitoring data regarding, for example, application rates, diversity statistics and workforce supply.

The first part of the government response to the consultation included a revised Economic Impact Assessment, page 16 sets out the Monitoring and Evaluation plan, the link is:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/changing-how-healthcare-education-is-funded

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