£5000-£8000 uni GRANT 2020!!

[Nutter50028]

It’s official! All Nurse midwifery and other allied health professions students will receive a uni grant of at least 5000 from 2020! Also including those in their 2nd/3rd year of their degree too, Now Student nurses will be able to study and do training without having to struggle financially seeing it’s difficult to train and maintain a job too! Super doops!

It's a definite improvement, good to hear.

@Jeansforme ah here we go..."too wee, too poor etc"

It won’t last in Scotland as they wouldn’t be able to afford it. If they get independence, all the free stuff will have to go

Excuse me, it isn't 'free', it is a different prioritisation of resources. Plus, I pay more taxes in Scotland than I would if I lived in England. And I don't begrudge a penny of it when it is used for education and our NHS.

They'll still come out of uni with considerable debt after paying £9k a year for their training. They will work at least 2300hrs for free in the NHS during their degree and pay for the privilege.

The Tories scrapped the bursary against massive criticism and warnings and Its loss has made a huge impact since 2017.

This is not a bursary, it's a working grant.

The old bursaries were only about 5k, 6k. I finished training in 2008 and got about 5.5k

And that was top level for being over 28yo or whatever the threshold was. My friend who was 26yo, married with kids got less than me as she was younger.

And we weren't allowed loans. Yes, no course fees which was good but that made no difference with living costs while training.

Many professions work ridiculous long shifts. Nurses and others currently do so mainly because of the vacancy rate. The intention to raise back the number of nurses and allied healthcare, so that they don't have to work long shifts again.

Most allied health professionals don't do 2300hrs in practice during training actually. Student Nurses do.

Nurses in practice will not stop working 12 hour shifts around the clock because there's more people. There is already a 40k shortage and 18k due to leave the profession (if boris can't talk them round of course 🙄). It'll take decades to back fill and keep up with demand if ever.

I can’t see it making much of a difference for recruitment. Until they adjust the Nurses salary to reflect other graduate jobs and the £27k tuition fees, nursing will never have the appeal it previous had. £5k per year is also less than we were receiving 10yrs ago and with rents considerably higher it’s just not enough. We will instead be seeing far more Nursing Associate programs appearing which will appeal to mature learning with it having a paid income and only 2yrs.

It's gesture politics. If they were really interested in making life easier for trainee nurses they would set the grant at more realistic levels.

@Dontdisturbmenow

Nurses (and other NHS technical specialists e.g. radiographers) should have all their fees paid and an annual cost if living payment of about £10k. They work ridiculously long shifts for nothing atm. It's outrageous to expect them to do this

Many professions work ridiculous long shifts. Nurses and others currently do so mainly because of the vacancy rate. The intention to raise back the number of nurses and allied healthcare, so that they don't have to work long shifts again.

The pp wasn't talking about nurses working long shifts in the job. They were talking about on training placements. They are expected to do full working weeks of 3 12hr shifts plus however long they need to stay late to get stuff done. They do this not only without pay, but effectively having to pay for it by accruing debts in terms of loans. Then, in order to afford to live they go and do other shifts, maybe as carers or HCAs, to earn money. On top of this they have their studying to do.

In their final year they do a management placement where they are in charge of the ward on their shift, so running the ward, managing staff, making serious and life-dependent decisions. For no pay at all.

They are supposed to be supernumerary but because everywhere is short staffed they never are, and often don't get time for the training and access to mentoring time, unless they do that outside of their shift time.

@TheNavigator spot on!

You Can’t possibly argue that 5k won’t make a difference?!

It’s better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick but won’t do what you claimed in your OP, ie, remove the financial burden.

Its definitely a move in the right direction. Don't forget student HCP's can also be eligible to apply for help with childcare costs and a parent learning allowance, too, depending on their circumstances.

This is not a bursary, it's a working grant.

I agree.

Don't underestimate the work the student nurses have to do.
My DD is a student child nurse, no long holidays that other students have, only 3 weeks off over summer.
50% of her course time in on placement, long shifts and because of chronic understaffing does real work for much of her day.
Student nurses do real hard graft on placement, much of it isn't "educational". it's the nuts and bolts basic nursing work- even in first year, fetching bedpans, bringing food, drink, changing beds- lots of them!
Unless they are paid some bursary or grant it is unfair that they are used in this way- especially if they are paying fees.

Thank you Dorothea- I think many people do not realise that trainee nurses (and presumably midwives too) don't get paid for those shifts.
I spent a lot of time in a&e about 18mo ago , and was cared for by lots of personnel but several students too. I had no idea until then how it worked for them.

Please do not celebrate a conservative government reinstating the bursary when its only a couple of years since they abolished both the bursary and made student nurses and midwives pay full tuition fees. The consequences of which was a 25% drop in applications at my local university, at a time when EU nurses were making plans to return home after the Brexit vote. It was incredibly short-sighted of them and I won’t be pleased until tuition fees are also paid. Nursing and Midwifery courses are 45 weeks of the year, full time either in uni or practice.

It wont help students on Universal credit as it will just be deducted pound for pound I imagine.

That won't even cover the rent.

Can you claim UC alongside student grants?

Yes, but the grant is counted as income, so 63% of it would come off UC.

It would be helpful if it was paid in monthly instalments. If it's paid 2 x a year, it will wipe out UC entirely for the month it's received. It may also be subject to the surplus earnings rule, in which case it could wipe out UC for a c ouple of months.

When I did my training my fees were paid by NHSBSA and I got a yearly bursary of £6701, I’d been entitled to the full amount as I’d been able to provide evidence that I’d independently supported myself for X amount of years prior to starting my training age 24. The only way I could afford to live off the bursary was to move back in with my dad, I also worked on top of placement.

I had a bar job for my first few months before placement started, and then once I’d some experience of the wards I got signed up to an agency and did bank shifts as a HCA. I’d get about £200 for a 12 hour shift on a Sunday so if I could secure one of those every week it made my finances a lot more manageable.

It was hard work, and a real struggle to balance my academic work, placement commitments - meeting the placement learning outcomes and providing the documented evidence of that, aswell as working and trying to enjoy my life.

The health service wouldn’t have survived any sustained period without the bursary, it’s not an attractive profession as it is.

But let’s all clap Boris for given back what his pals had taken away.

Something is better than nothing!

“Something is better than nothing!”

That’s exactly what they want you to think. But we already had more than this, we didn’t have to pay tuition fees and we got a non repayable bursary. The tories took it away, and now they’re giving back a token gesture, and people who know nothing about the job or the work involved tell us “something is better than nothing”.

lakie lady - student grants & loans are not deducted from Universal credit at 63%, they are taken off pound for pound after a small amount is disregarded each month. So people claiming the bursary and Uc which will be the majority of lone parents will not benefit.

On Uc fif the bursary is paid and treated in the same way as student loan payments then the termly amount is divided between the number of months it's designed to cover and then deducted pound for pound so if for example a 6k loan is for the whole year it would be divided by 12 to give a monthly figure. I think something like £110 a month is disregarded before it reduces Uc pound for pound. I'm not absolutely sure on this amount though or whether it is treated exactly the same as a loan would be,

About time. Although surprisingly student nurse numbers are up anyway without it so it isn’t deterring people. I’m glad I did my diploma when the bursary was still about. I also worked 2 jobs alongside it to be able to manage financially whilst living at home, the travel costs of needing a car made sure I needed to work as well. Thankfully I got fully funded to complete my degree later on.