Thousands of student nurses and midwives ditching training over free childcare scheme exclusion

Thousands of student nurses, midwives, and teachers are leaving their courses or ditching training altogether because the government’s free childcare scheme does not extend to them, The Independent has been told.

Campaigners are warning that a growing crisis affecting the education and healthcare sectors is being made worse by students’ inability to access free childcare – forcing them to leave the sector and find work elsewhere.

The warning comes as worrying Ucas data published this week showed that applications for UK nursing degree courses were down for the third year running. Just 31,100 people applied for a course for 2024, down from 33,570 last year, 41,220 in 2022 and 46,040 in 2021.

NHS cuts, heavy workloads, and a collective sense of being undervalued have already sparked an exodus of UK-trained nurses from the NHS, with 42,000 empty vacancies in England alone.

Because of this, several prominent campaign groups, including Mumsnet and Save the Children, are demanding chancellor Jeremy Hunt extend the government’s free childcare scheme to all parents in training.

Mr Hunt initially unveiled the major extension to free childcare for parents in the spring of last year to win back voters, with working parents who have children under five told they can claim 30 hours of free childcare for 38 weeks per year from September 2025. But Mr Hunt’s 30-hour childcare offer only covers parents who are in paid work.

Trainee teachers, nurses and midwives often work full time, meaning they will need childcare, but do not qualify because they are technically studying.

Some 190,214 students are currently training to be nurses, teachers and midwives in England, according to the latest data.

The Independent has revealed there are major problems with funding, staff shortages and nursery closures. The new scheme comes after ministers rolled out 30 hours of free childcare per week in term time for three and four-year-olds in England in 2017.

Josie Irwin, head of equality at Unison, the UK’s largest trade union, said they are witnessing student nurses and social workers dropping out of their training due to not being eligible for the government’s free childcare.

She said “a bubbling cauldron of problems” engulfing the NHS and caring professions is being compounded by the lack of childcare.

“It goes hand in glove with the recruitment and retention issues which are running across the caring professions, such as nursing, healthcare assistance, paramedics, social workers, midwives and teaching assistants,” Ms Irwin added.

“Women ending up in really precarious zero-hours employment is represented by politicians as a choice but it is not. They don’t have any other option in doing really difficult, demanding, underpaid, undervalued challenging shifts.”

Exclusive data, shared with The Independent, found around four in 10 student nurses and paramedics say problems securing childcare mean they are contemplating dropping out of their course.

Researchers, who polled 600 student nurses and paramedics, also found around seven in 10 report being heavily dependent on family and friends to help them with childcare.

Christine Farquharson, associate director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, also warned that such families cannot access other childcare help programmes such as tax-free childcare or subsidies through universal credit.

A midwife, who didn’t want to be named fearing reprisals from management, said: “It is not unusual for there to be more student midwives than trained midwives and sometimes student midwives are being thrown in the deep end and plugging the gap of the midwifery shortage.

“This can be dangerous for patient safety. Student midwives are worth their weight in gold – the service would completely crumble if we didn’t have their support.”

Daisy*, who has two young children, said she was forced to drop out of her nursing course for two years due to struggles to access childcare – assuming she would not be able to return.

The 31-year-old, who lives in Nottinghamshire, explained she was previously running a digital marketing company but chose to take a hefty pay cut and retrain to be a nurse due to feeling unfulfilled and wanting to give back.

She is resuming her course this month but will not be able to claim the government’s free childcare provision that begins in September, or the free hours she is currently claiming for her other child, unless she continues doing her current paid work, she explained.

“I work nights to save money on childcare. I look after a child with complex needs. I do 24 hours of care work through the night a week,” Daisy added.

“If I were to go back onto the course and drop my paid hours so I can properly focus on the course, we would lose access to the free childcare. Many weeks I don’t sleep at all after my shift. I have an out-of-body experience most weeks – I just float.”

“It has negatively impacted my mental health – terribly so,” she added. “It is affecting my sleep and causing me a lot of anxiety. I think about it all the time. I feel trapped. I feel like everything is against me wanting to be a nurse.”

The latest data shows there is a shortage of 42,306 nurses and 2,500 midwives in the NHS in England, and a deficit of 2,300 teachers.

Sarah Ronan, director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, explained her member organisations frequently hear from people, mainly women, who are doing vocational training that involves on-the-job placements being forced to drop out due to the cost of childcare.

Ms Ronan said the childcare sector is already grappling with “unprecedented demand” – warning the government must only roll out free childcare provision for students in a way that does not “overwhelm the sector”.

She added: “Often people come to these professions later in life. In those situations, they may already have children and therefore they are being penalised due to not being given adequate support to retrain. There are also recruitment campaigns by the government that target people as career changers to come into these professions.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found the UK had one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world.

“Understandably, trainee midwives, teachers and nurses are furious they cannot access these new schemes,” Joeli Brearley, chief executive and founder of campaign group Pregnant Then Screwed, said.

“Mothers in training have contacted us to express their concern as to how this exclusion undervalues the work they do and has made them reconsider whether training is right for them.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “Students who are parents already receive a grant paying 85 per cent of childcare costs across the full year including holidays, up to a weekly limit, and student nurses with children receive an additional NHS grant of £7,000 per academic year.

“On top of this, nurses have received a 5 per cent pay rise for 2023/24 and two significant one-off awards worth over £2,000 on average."

Dr Nichola Ashby, deputy chief nurse at the Royal College of Nursing, warned grants available for nurses “don’t come close” to paying for childcare.

*Name changed