Responding to the announcement that university tuition fees will rise from next year, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger, said:
“As student nurse numbers collapse in every English region, ministers decide to make a bad situation worse. Today’s announcement will discourage more people from joining the profession. That means fewer highly-skilled staff on wards and in communities. That is bad news for patient care and undermines the government’s very own NHS reforms.
“The tuition fee model has proven to be an unmitigated failure for nursing education, punishing students with high levels of debt whilst driving down the numbers entering the profession. Yet again, there has been no increase in the maintenance grant for nursing students. Ministers were able to quickly and effectively diagnose a broken NHS but have failed to do so with nurse education.
“The Prime Minister said he was committed to ensuring services have ‘the right trained staff in the right numbers.’ That pledge has taken a significant blow today. Without a better model for nurse education and bringing forward new investment, the government has no hope of transforming care. A loan forgiveness model for nursing staff in England who commit to working in the NHS and public services must be part of the new measures.”
Ends
Notes to editors
The number of people accepted onto nursing courses fell by up to 40% in parts of England between 2020 and 2023.
There are currently over 31,000 unfilled nursing posts NHS England.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan aims to grow the nursing workforce from around 350,000 nurses to around 550,000 in 2036/37. RCN analysis shows there are just 1,000 extra people a year currently forecast to start nursing courses in 2029 compared with a decade earlier.
