Even more students will have the opportunity to apply for places on nursing, midwifery or allied health professional courses in England, the Health Secretary has announced today, following unprecedented demand.
On 4 May the Education Secretary announced new measures to protect students and universities, including an additional 5,000 ring-fenced places for nursing, midwifery or allied health courses to support the country's vital public services.
Large numbers of students are applying to study healthcare courses, and the government has now agreed to extend the timetable for universities to apply for the extra places to Friday 17 July, and to cover additional bids over the initial 5,000.
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock said:
Following the fantastic news last Thursday that we have over 12,000 more nurses working in our NHS compared to last year, we have seen huge demand from universities for the additional places we've made available on nursing, midwifery or allied health courses.
This pandemic has demonstrated just how important our healthcare professionals are, and the demand for places shows that there are thousands of prospective students looking to train for rewarding careers in our NHS.
So far there has been significant demand for additional places across a range of courses including adult, mental health and learning disability nursing, midwifery, paramedicine and radiography.
As universities have indicated that there is more demand for places, this extension will give them more time and allow them to bid with the confidence that there will be clinical placement capacity.
Background information
- Higher education providers who want to bid for additional healthcare places can now do so up until 5pm on 17 July.
- According the latest NHS workforce stats, over the last year (March 2019 to 2020) the number of nurses has gone up by 12,131, from 282,422 to 294,553. This figure does not include any staff who returned to the frontline during the pandemic.
