Student nurse numbers fall by 21% in three years
Nursing student numbers in the UK have fallen by more than a fifth in three years, new figures from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) have shown.
UCAS today published its final figures for nursing and midwifery degree acceptances before the beginning of the 2024-25 academic year.
“The failure to attract more into nursing puts the profession and the future of patient care at risk”
Patricia Marquis
A total of 23,800 student nurses accepted an offer to study nursing this year across the UK, a 21.1% decline since the 30,150 peak in 2021, and a 1.4% decrease on 2023, when 24,140 students accepted a place.
England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all seen student numbers fall since last year, by 2.4%, 3% and 15.2% respectively, with larger still decreases for England and Scotland since the 2021 peak.
Meanwhile, in Wales, acceptance numbers have increased by 14.3% since 2023, with 1,200 this year compared to 1,050. However, it is still 22.1% down on 2021 when the number stood at 1,540.
Midwifery has also seen a decline, with 3,880 acceptances for 2024-25, This represented a 0.5% decrease UK-wide compared to 2023, and a 7% fall on 2021.
Today’s figures from UCAS, published 28 days after A-Level results day, lay in contrast to the rosier picture painted before clearing opened. On 15 August, the day students received their final grades, the organisation’s provisional statistics suggested that acceptances, UK-wide, had increaesd by 0.8% for nursing.
Clearing remains open until 21 October, and therefore UCAS’s numbers may change in the next month. But, by this point, the vast majority of applications and acceptances will have been settled.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) executive director for England, Patricia Marquis, described the UCAS figures as a “collapse” and said the data “should act as a warning sign to government of the urgent need to act”.
“Ignoring this now would be an act of abandonment at a time of crisis,” she warned.
“The health secretary diagnosed a broken system and if he wants to succeed in his fundamental change of approach, this must start with the nursing workforce and attracting more people to the profession.
“As the health of millions of patients deteriorates while on waiting lists, tens of thousands of nursing posts remain vacant. The failure to attract more into nursing puts the profession and the future of patient care at risk.”
These UCAS figures come shortly after Dame Ruth May, former chief nursing officer for England, told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry that a pre-pandemic fall in applications to study nursing worsened pressures on the NHS workforce.
Dame Ruth blamed this in part on the decision, in 2015, to remove the bursary for nursing students by then-chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, which came into effect in 2017.
Ruth May speaking at the UK Covid-19 Inquiry
She told the inquiry on Tuesday that going into the pandemic with the additional nurses who would have studied had the bursary not been axed would have “made a difference”.
“Maybe we needn’t have made some of the decisions around critical care ratios,” she said.
“Of course, if we had more nurses [in the pandemic], there’d be less burnout, less psychological impact.
“Removing the bursary, for me, was a catastrophic decision.”
Ms Marquis added, in response to Dame Ruth’s comments at the inquiry: “Only this week the former chief nursing officer said the removal of the nursing bursary was a ‘catastrophic decision’.
“Now, the new government can right that wrong with a commitment to nurse education, including funding of tuition fees and ensuring every recent graduate of nursing has a job, to attract and retain the nursing staff needed to deliver for patients.”
