Research Professional News calls on the government to scrap nursing tuition fees for those fighting Covid-19
Research Professional News has launched a campaign calling for an immediate guarantee from the government that student nurses who have joined the NHS to support its fight against Covid-19 will not be liable for tuition fees while they are working.
The Our Debt, Not Theirs campaign urges the government to take action on two issues. First, Research Professional News wants the government to guarantee that students working on the NHS front line during the coronavirus pandemic will not pay tuition fees while they work.
Once that guarantee is in place, the government must take action to reimburse tuition fees or forgive tuition fee debt for all current nursing, midwifery and allied healthcare students. This is something Unison, the National Union of Students, the Royal College of Midwives and the Royal College of Nursing asked health secretary Matt Hancock to commit to on 6 May.
Final-year nursing students in their last six months of study have been able to join the NHS early, while all other students except first-year learners have been encouraged to work for the NHS during the coronavirus crisis.
The Department for Education has confirmed that students will still receive maintenance loans next term regardless of whether they study or work for the NHS—for which they receive a salary—but it has not made guarantees on whether students are still liable to pay tuition fees.
During a House of Commons education committee hearing on 29 April, Conservative MP and committee chair Robert Halfon asked education secretary Gavin Williamson to make sure nursing students were “not paying for tuition that they are not receiving”. Halfon asked the question after Research Professional News raised the issue with him.
While Williamson promised to respond, the committee has not yet received an answer.
Pledging his support to our campaign, Daniel Zeichner, Labour MP for Cambridge and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Universities, said: “Student nurses are too often thrown into the front line—they should not be paying fees, particularly in these most
difficult times.”
His colleague Emma Hardy, Labour’s shadow universities minister, stressed that the party was opposed to tuition fees. “The government really must ask themselves whether it is appropriate to ask students to pay tuition fees as a price of working to save lives during the coronavirus crisis,” she said. Her thoughts were echoed by shadow science minister, Chi Onwurah.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the University and College Union, said the pandemic had “exposed the fundamental weaknesses of a funding system built on student fees”. “This campaign is right to point out how wrong it would be to saddle them with decades of debt,” she added.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the Unison union, said healthcare students had “stepped up to the plate to help the NHS” during the pandemic.
He said: “The government can show the depth of its gratitude by writing off their student fees.”
This article appeared in Research Fortnight