One of the meaner and crazier cuts planned by the Tory government is the proposal to axe the NHS student bursaries. There are good reasons why nursing students etc get a bursary while undergoing their training, but on 25 November an announcement was made that from 1 August 2017, new nursing, midwifery and allied health students will no longer receive NHS bursaries.
Apart from nurses and midwifes the list includes some specialities I would have to look up, but here it is in full:
Chiropodist, Podiatrist, Operating Department Practitioner, Dental Hygienist/Dental Therapist, Orthotist/Prosthetist, Orthoptist, Dietitian, Physiotherapist, Radiographer, Radiotherapist, Speech and Language Therapist and Occupational Therapist.
Currently there are awards which cover (up to certain limits) tuition fees, as well as maintenance, in part means-tested and reduced by expected contributions from parents or partners. It’s a complicated scheme, and not particularly generous, but it does allow many students who would otherwise be unable to train, particularly mature students, to do so.
Instead of bursaries, in future NHS students will have to rely on student loans – and end their courses with large debts which will have to be repaid.
Student nurses don’t just go to lectures and take notes. Much of there time is spent actually in hospitals looking after patients just as they will do when they have finished their training. They learn on the job, and are an essential part of the provision of services for patients. They are doing useful and necessary work for the NHS and deserve to be recompensed for it.
Because of the long shifts they work in hospital, student nurses have far less opportunity to supplement their income with part-time work than other students.
We have a shortage of nurses and many hospitals have to advertise overseas and bring in trained nurses from abroad. We simply do not train enough. Health Minister Jeremy Hunt wants to cut the cost of training by axing bursaries, making it possible to offer more training places; but doing so will certainly make it much harder for many students to take up the places, and will penalise all those who train for these vital jobs, who will suffer hardship while training and also have to continue paying back their loans long into their careers.
Nursing isn’t a career that people go into for the money, and it involves a great deal of work at unsocial hours. It seems unfair to further penalise them by removing the bursaries. The protests are being led by current nursing students from Kings College, and supported by those from elsewhere as well as across the whole medical professions. The changes will not affect those currently studying, but only new students from 2017, and the protests are because they see the effect it will have on future generations of students, and also on the NHS.
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