Government re-affirms plan to charge tuition fee debt for nursing students
Care minister Helen Whately has confirmed the government still has no plans to cancel nursing students’ debt after controversially claiming they are “not deemed to be providing a service”.
In a written statement published on 2 July, Whately said the government had not moved from its position of keeping tuition fee debt for nurses who worked on the NHS frontlines during the Covid-19 pandemic. Education minister Gavin Williamson first revealed those students’ debt would not be cancelled on 2 June, despite widespread calls for nurses’ debts to be scrapped.
“There are no plans to cancel tuition fees for National Health Service staff who have graduated early and joined the NHS to support the COVID-19 response,” Whately said in a written statement on 2 July. Whately was responding to Labour MP for Romsey and Southampton North Caroline Nokes, who asked about the government’s plans to cancel tuition fees for nurses.
It comes after Whately attracted criticism for claiming student nurses were “not deemed to be providing a service” as she explained why upcoming grants for nursing students would not be backdated to cover the 2017 cohort, who missed out on both maintenance grants and bursaries to cover tuition, but who were eligible to volunteer to work in the NHS during the pandemic.
Third-year nursing student Jess Collins, whose campaigning for grants to be backdated prompted Whately’s letter, told Research Professional News on 26 June she was “definitely still seeking an apology” from Whately to all student nurses.
Ian Norman, executive dean for nursing and professor of mental health at King’s College London, told Research Professional News that Whately’s comments that nursing students are not providing a service “suggests limited understanding of the contribution of clinical experience to the preparation of our future nursing workforce”.
But on scrapping fees and backdating grant payments, Norman added that while he sympathised “with the final year students who feel they missed out, most changes to legislation and government funding are not implemented retrospectively”.
Elsewhere, Conservative peer Elizabeth Berridge said in a written statement on 2 July that while the government was “extremely grateful to all students who chose to opt into a paid clinical placement” with the NHS during the pandemic, the government had already “ensured that all students who do so are rewarded fairly for their hard work” through salaries, pension contributions and training.
“Nursing students will continue to be required to pay tuition fees, and there are no plans for a specific debt write-off scheme for these students,” she wrote in response to cross-bench peer Caroline Cox, who asked what steps the government had taken to “recognise the contribution of nursing students during the Covid-19 pandemic” and scrap tuition fees for nurses.
Research Professional News is campaigning for nursing students to have their final-year tuition fee debt cancelled in recognition of their work in the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic.