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 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.
- 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.
