Responding to the 10.5% fall in the number of accepted applicants onto nursing courses in England in 2023/24, Royal College of Nursing Deputy Chief Nurse Dr Nichola Ashby said:
“The government’s NHS Long Term Workforce Plan is falling off course before it’s even begun. For the plan to succeed, we need to see significant increases in the numbers choosing to study nursing and we’re going in the wrong direction.
“Nursing is one of the greatest professions anyone can join but students are being put off by low wages, high debt, and incredibly pressurised working environments. With tens of thousands of vacancies already in the NHS, we can’t afford more would-be nurses to choose other career paths.
“Our health services are in crisis, but the government staunchly refuses to invest in the nursing workforce to bring the NHS back from the brink – while the social care sector suffers just as severely.”
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Notes to Editors
The latest data from UCAS shows that nursing is the only major healthcare related course which has seen a fall in the number of acceptances across the UK. Midwifery is up 2%, Medicine is up 10% and Dentistry up 15% on 2022.
According to the Health Foundation, the NHS Workforce Plan (England) requires nursing and midwifery training intakes to increase by about 32,000 by 2031-32 (from 40,400 in 2022/23 to 72,400 by 2031/32). The UCAS 2023 End of Cycle data shows a 10.5% fall in the number of accepted applicants onto nursing courses in England in 2023 (from 23,240 in 2022 to 20,790).
The latest NHS England Vacancy Statistics show that the number of vacant nursing posts during the second quarter of 2023/24 was at 42,306.
