Government urged to wipe debts for students in wake of Covid-19

On the latest official count, more than 5,550 students from 35 universities in the country had opted to interrupt their studies and take up an extended, paid clinical placement to help tackle the crisis.

“They are making a vital contribution in our national effort to beat the coronavirus"

Sarah Owen

Sarah Owen, MP for Luton North who serves on the Health and Social Care Select Committee, has led a call on health and social care secretary Matt Hancock to waive the fees of these students.

In a letter supported and signed by 81 other Labour MPs, Ms Owen said: “We value the contribution of these nurses and, as MPs, will always stand with them.

“They are making a vital contribution in our national effort to beat the coronavirus.

“We ask you and your department to commit to doing all it can to support these nurses who will be facing the start of a new career like no one in our health service has before.

“Therefore, we are calling on the government to support these new nurses by cancelling the student debt they have incurred throughout their studies.”

Student nurses in England formerly did not have to pay tuition fees because these were covered by the government through a bursary.

However, this offer was cut by the Conservative Party for all nursing students starting on 1 August 2017 onwards.

While the government has recently pledged to introduce new yearly maintenance grants to cover living costs, starting from September 2020, students will still be paying around £9,000 a year for tuition.

In the letter, Ms Owen said the ideal situation would be for the government to drop fees for all student nurses but added that wiping debts for those working during the pandemic should be a priority right now.

“In future it would be a real sign of permanent change from the government if we could see that every nurse left their training and education without any debt but right now, student nurses are risking their own health to help care for people during this crisis in really difficult circumstances, managing unprecedented demand and often without the correct protective equipment,” she said.

“Cancelling this debt, as a first step, for this group of hardworking nurses would be an important signal to those starting their careers during this crisis that they are valued, not just by the public and their patients, but by their government as well.”

“If anything, this should show why it’s so important that tuition fees are scrapped"

Amy Fancourt

Under emergency plans put in place by the Nursing and Midwifery Council and its partners, all student nurses apart from those in their first year are able to take up paid clinical placements to support frontline colleagues during the Covid-19 pandemic.

For third-year students in the last six months of their course, they are able to extend their final three-month placement into a six-month placement and still get the chance to qualify at the end of it. The NMC may also introduce a temporary register for students, but this has not happened yet.

However, the NMC has stressed that the choice of joining the workforce during this challenging time must be with the individual student, while some may not be able to help because of underlying health conditions or vulnerable family members.

Amy Fancourt, who represents students on the Royal College of Nursing Council, said the actions the Labour MPs were calling for would be welcome but did not go far enough.

She told Nursing Times that she feared clearing debts only for those joining the frontline would add pressure on students to opt in and would disadvantage those who could not take up the offer.

“If something is made voluntary, but then if you don’t do it you are at a disadvantage, then it no longer becomes voluntary,” said Ms Fancourt, who is in the final year of a master’s degree in adult and mental health nursing at London’s City University and has applied for a Covid-19 placement.

“Whether you choose to opt in, or whether you chose to opt out, there should be no discrimination against any student nurses.”

Ms Fancourt said students across every year group enrolled during the crisis deserved to have their fees cuts because they had all made a contribution or had their studies put on hold to some degree.

Although ultimately, Ms Fancourt said she hoped the pandemic could force the government to realise that its decision to cut the bursary was a mistake and therefore reverse it.

“It’s a good thing to do for sure, I can never say that them trying to encourage debt to be cleared is in some way negative, but I think we need to look at it with a wider lens and think about the consequences of doing that for only a select group of people,” she said.

“If anything, this should show why it’s so important that tuition fees are scrapped because if there is a pandemic then student nurses are the most suitable people to be called upon, and yet they are still being asked to pay huge amounts of money to higher education institutes.”

Ms Fancourt added: “The bottom line is I think tuition fees should never have been charged for student nurses, I think they should be scrapped for all cohorts that have been affected by this – first year, second year, third year and fourth years in some instances, and that this should be a very clear indicator to the government that reintroducing tuition fees was a poor choice.”

In response to the letter from Labour, a government spokesperson said: “We are grateful to all students who choose to support our NHS during this extremely difficult time and will be ensuring all students who do opt in are rewarded fairly for their hard work.

“We urge others to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.”

The government highlighted that all nursing students who opted in would receive a salary and automatic NHS pension entitlement at the appropriate band.

The Student Loans Company has agreed to pay out maintenance loan to students for the next term as normal, regardless of whether they chose to work on the frontline or continue their studies.

The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS Business Services Authority have also confirmed that the learning support fund, which includes funding for travel, childcare and exceptional hardship, will continue to be paid as normal during this period.

• Click here for news and opinion on coronavirus 
• Click here to visit the coronavirus clinical zone