March today to protest end of student bursary

Hundreds of midwives and nurses are today expected to join a march in London to protest the new plans to scrap the university bursaries for their courses.  This comes in the same week that an independent study suggests that the scheme might even end up costing the NHS more money!

The new economic analysis, commissioned by UNISON and NUS from London Economics, has revealed concerns over the Government plans.  The report came on the same day as a ‘save NHS bursaries’ lobby in Westminster, and has claimed that 2000 fewer students will embark on courses as a result.

The changes will result in students on nursing, midwifery or other health degrees ending their courses with debts of just under £49,000 as of 2017 – compared to the current three-year course resulting in £7,000 debt. It has been suggested that this huge increase in costs will result in a 6-7% reduction in annual intake, equally to 2000 students per year. This is despite ministers advising that 10,000 new places will be created.

As a result, universities will lose £57m-£77m per student intake, raising concerns that some universities may stop running the courses. The reduction of graduates will also impact the staffing levels within the NHS, subsequently increasing spend on agency staff and overseas recruitment costs.

It has also been suggested that as midwifery, nursing and health students are often older and earn less after graduation than other students, it is unlikely that they will earn enough to pay off their entire debt during their careers, limiting the proposed savings of this proposal.

The Head of Health from UNISON, Christina McAnea states “The Government claims there’s huge savings to be made from scrapping the bursary, but this analysis suggests the reverse is true. The prospect of graduating with huge debts is understandably going to put many people off a career in the NHS – especially when they realise they may never earn enough during their working lives to pay off the loan entirely. The NHS already has too few nurses, scrapping the bursary will make an already difficult situation much worse.

With too few staff on the wards the impact on patient safety could well be disastrous. Fewer students coming out of university will mean trusts have no option but to go even further into the red as they have to up their spending on agency staff and overseas recruitment. The government needs to rethink these ill-conceived plans”

For more on this story, see here

To read about the planned demonstrations see here

View an online petition to save the NHS bursary, here.