Supplementary memorandum from the Department
for Education and Employment
Baroness Blackstone gave evidence at the final
hearing on 17 April during which she agreed to provide the committee
with some figures (where they exist) on applications to nursing
degree courses broken down by socio-economic group and on drop
out rates for these courses. We're sorry that this has taken longer
than we had hoped but this was due to the need to commission data
from UCAS.
The Committee were interested to find out whether
the fact that nursing students have less time available to spend
on paid work whilst studying has had a deterrent affect on applications
from people from the lower socio-economic groups. The attached
figures indicate that this is not the case. People from lower
social class (IIIm-V) backgrounds are more likely to go into nursing
(29.1 per cent) than other types of HE course (24.9 per cent).
DfEE does not hold any data on drop out rates from nursing degree
courses. According to the Department of Health attrition rates
from nursing and midwifery courses vary from year to year and
institution to institution but is currently around 17 per cent
and falling. This is slightly less than the full-time first degree
drop out rate for the UK which is 18 per cent.
UK APPLICANTS TO NURSING, BY SOCIAL CLASS,
1999
| Social Class | Male
| Female | Total | %
| % All courses |
| I Professional | 25 | 421
| 446 | 7.2 | 12
|
| II Intermediate | 172 | 2,172
| 2,344 | 38.0 | 37.3
|
| IIIn Skilled non-Manual | 36 |
677 | 713 | 11.6 |
12.1 |
| IIIm Skilled Manual | 76 |
814 | 890 | 14.4 |
15.1 |
| IV Partly Skilled | 55 | 712
| 767 | 12.4 | 7.9
|
| V Unskilled | 10 | 130
| 140 | 2.3 | 1.9
|
| Not Known | 83 | 785
| 868 | 14.1 | 13.8
|
| Total | 457 | 5,711
| 6,168 | 100.0 | 100.1
|
Department for Education and Employment
May 2000
|
