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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Cousins: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) trainee nurses are employed by each NHS Trust in the North East region and (b) student nurses on NHS contracts and receiving bursaries from the NHS are studying at each higher education institution in the North East region; what the value of NHS bursaries was in (i) 2004-05 and (ii) 1997; and whether such bursaries (A) are taxable and (B) were taxable in 1997. [221970] Miss Melanie Johnson: [holding answer 15 March 2005]: Student nurses are not technically employed by national health service trusts whilst undertaking pre-registration nurse training courses, even though they continue to be paid a salary, as they have supernumerary status during their training period. There were 307 health care assistants seconded to nurse training by Northumberland, Tyne and Wear strategic health authority on behalf of their local trusts in 2003-04. (Source: Q4 2003-04MPET NMET Quarterly Monitoring). Information is not held centrally on which higher education institution each student attends. Total student bursary awards in Northern England Education and Training Consortium were £183,452 in the 1997-98 academic year and £2,463,424 in the 2004-05 academic year. The figures are not directly comparable because the NHS Student Grants Unit (SGU) did not take on the responsibility for the assessment and payment of NHS Bursaries to nursing degree students until the 1998-99 academic year and only assessed and paid bursaries to Allied Health Profession students in the 1997-98 academic year. Similarly, Diploma level nursing and midwifery students were not paid their bursaries by SGU until the 1999-2000 academic year, with fifth year undergraduate medical and dental students, who commenced their first year from 1 September 1998 onwards, being incorporated into the NHS Bursary Scheme from the 2002-03 academic year. NHS student bursaries are not taxable and were not taxable in 1997.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

432 c1454W;432 c1450W; 221970

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Staff Grants Higher education NHS Nurses North East Training Taxation Students Student numbers

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk