NHS to miss out on recruiting thousands of nurses if BTecs are scrapped

theguardian.com:

The NHS will miss out on recruiting thousands of nurses every year as a direct result of the government scrapping BTec courses in health and social care, hospital bosses have warned.

NHS Employers wrote in a letter to the education secretary, James Cleverly, that it had “serious concerns” about the plan, which it fears will exacerbate the health service’s acute staffing problems.

BTecs are long-established qualifications that help young people get jobs as support workers in nursing, midwifery or allied health professions. Some of them later train to be a fully qualified nurse, midwife, radiographer or occupational therapist.

NHS Employers is particularly worried that abolishing BTECs in 2024 and 2025, as part of a move to new T-level qualifications in a shake-up of post-16 education, will damage the NHS in England’s efforts to recruit enough nurses to help fill the almost 40,000 vacancies it has for them.

Danny Mortimer, the organisation’s chief executive, told Cleverly in its letter that about a fifth of those studying for a nursing degree had done a health and social care BTec. In 2017, for example, 7,120 of those on a nursing course had already got that qualification – 20% of the total. That was more than the 5,947 who had embarked on a degree after doing A-levels. “This shows that the course provides an effective pathway to nurse training for a significant number of people,” he said.

In separate remarks, Mortimer said: “Abolishing these important BTec courses in health and social care is an incredibly shortsighted decision by the government.

“At a time when the NHS is already extremely short-staffed and carrying 105,000 vacancies, depriving the health service of a pipeline of fresh nursing, midwifery and other healthcare