NHS Learning Support Fund and NHS Bursary: How NHS Student Funding Works

Start with the course, not the job title. The Learning Support Fund and the NHS Bursary are defined by what you are studying and how far through it you are.

One nuance that catches people out: the Learning Support Fund follows the university, not your home address. The NHSBSA requires that you are "studying on an eligible course at a university in England", and that you are eligible for tuition fee and maintenance support from the Student Loans Company through Student Finance England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.^[source] A Welsh or Scottish student who moves to England to train can therefore be in scope, while an English student who trains in Cardiff or Glasgow is not.

The Learning Support Fund is not one payment. It is four separate things you claim individually, and three of them depend on your having claimed the first. All of them are grants rather than loans: they are paid by the NHS Business Services Authority, not the Student Loans Company, so they never appear on the balance you repay through PAYE.

The NHSBSA describes it as "a non-means-tested grant of £5,000 each academic year for eligible students", paid "pro rata" on part-time courses.^[source] The DHSC scheme rules put it beyond doubt, calling it "a non-means tested and non-repayable Training Grant of £5,000 per academic year", and using the same words of the Specialist Subject Payment and Parental Support.^[source] Non-means-tested matters here: unlike your Maintenance Loan, your household income does not reduce it. Two students on the same course get the same Training Grant whatever their parents earn.

On top of that there is a Specialist Subject Payment of "an extra £1,000 per academic year" for a fixed list of subjects, added automatically to your LSF account when you apply for the Training Grant. The Department of Health and Social Care scheme rules for 2026/27 list six:^[source]

• Mental health nursing
• Learning disability nursing
• Radiography (diagnostic and therapeutic)
• Prosthetics and orthotics
• Orthoptics
• Podiatry

A mental health nursing student therefore claims £6,000 a year in grants before any of the placement-cost elements below.

Parental Support is "a set amount of £2,000 per academic year", again pro rata for part-time students, for students with a child "under the age of 15 years", or "under 17 years if the child is registered with special educational needs".^[source]

The NHSBSA also states that "Parental Support will not affect your access to child support or other means of funding through your higher education provider or other sources", which is the reassurance most student parents are looking for before they claim.

TDAE is the element that makes clinical placements survivable, and it is also the one students most often lose money on by claiming late. It reimburses "excess costs for travel relating to your placement, compared to your usual daily journey to university" and "temporary accommodation you paid for to attend your placement".^[source]

Read "excess" carefully. You are not reimbursed for the journey you would have made to university anyway — only for the difference. The published rates are:

• "42 pence per mile for driving"
• "30 pence per mile for cycling"
• "up to £82.50 per night for commercial accommodation - for example, a hotel or bed and breakfast"
• "up to £37.50 per night for non-commercial accommodation - for example, with a friend or relative", but not with parents

You also have to be in the scheme before you can claim: "You need to receive the Training Grant before you can claim TDAE." Claims are routed through your university, and the NHSBSA aims "to process it within 20 working days" once your university sends it on.

The Exceptional Support Fund is the hardship element: "a means-tested and non-repayable grant available to eligible healthcare students who experience unforeseen financial hardship during their studies", worth "up to £3,000, depending on your circumstances".^[source]

It is genuinely a last resort in the NHSBSA's own terms. You must "have exhausted all other available means of funding" and "have applied to your university for any hardship or other available funding first". In practice that means exhausting your university hardship fund before the NHSBSA will look at an ESF application.

Three conditions have to hold at once: an eligible pre-registration course, a university in England, and an entitlement to student finance from one of the four UK funding bodies.^[source]

The student finance condition is the one worth reading twice. The NHSBSA requires you to be "eligible for tuition fees and maintenance support from the Student Loans Company", through Student Finance England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. That is an eligibility test, not a requirement to borrow: the NHSBSA adds that "If you've not applied for a student loan, you may still be eligible for NHS LSF" if you meet the underlying criteria. But it does settle the question people ask most often, which is whether the grant replaces the loan. It does not. The scheme is built on the assumption that you are a normal student finance customer who also happens to be on a healthcare course.

Nursing and midwifery students lost the NHS Bursary for cohorts starting from 2017, which is why so much of the advice online is out of date. What remains is a medical and dental scheme, and it does not start on day one. The NHSBSA says: "You may be eligible if you're studying to become a doctor or dentist and: you're on an undergraduate course lasting 5 or 6 years, or you're on a graduate entry course lasting 3 or 4 years".^[source]

It is also the one NHS scheme on this page that is settled by where you live rather than where you study. The NHSBSA requires that you "normally live in England and be an English resident on the first day of your first academic year", and states plainly: "If you moved to England from somewhere else in the UK for your studies, you're not eligible." A Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish medical student at an English medical school is funded by their own nation's scheme, not by this one.^[source]

• Standard undergraduate medicine or dentistry: "you can apply for years 5 and 6".
• Graduate entry, three-year course: "you can apply for years 2 and 3".
• Graduate entry, four-year course: "you can apply for years 2, 3 and 4".

Until the bursary starts, a medical student is on ordinary student finance like anybody else. Medicine and dentistry are also exempt from the equivalent or lower qualification rule, which is why career changers can fund them at all — covered in our guide to second degree funding.

The bursary itself has three parts for the 2026 to 2027 academic year.

All figures above quoted from the NHSBSA's NHS Bursary pages, read 20 September 2026.^[source]

The undergraduate tuition fee contribution of up to £9,790 matches the full 2026/27 fee cap of £9,790, so a bursary-year medical student is not borrowing for fees at all. The graduate entry contribution is capped well below the fee cap because it is only part of a package — see the graduate entry breakdown in the next section. The same rates appear in the statutory NHS Bursary Scheme rules for 2026/27.^[source]

The bursary also carries its own allowances, separate from the Student Finance England versions: a means-tested Dependants Allowance of up to £2,644 for a spouse, partner, civil partner or first child and up to £593 for each additional child; a means-tested Parent Learning Allowance of up to £1,300 a year; a Childcare Allowance of 85% of costs up to £204.03 a week for one child or £349.80 a week for two or more; and the NHS Bursary's own Disabled Students' Allowance, with a 2026/27 maximum of £28,397.^[source] That DSA is the NHS scheme's own figure and is not the same as the Student Finance England DSA maximum.

This is the question that decides whether a healthcare degree is affordable, and the answer is different for the two schemes.

Learning Support Fund students: yes, the full loan

Nursing, midwifery and allied health students apply for student finance exactly like every other undergraduate. The Student Loans Company's own practitioner guidance for 2026/27 is unambiguous: "In addition to the standard tuition fee loan and living costs support package from SFE, students studying qualifying healthcare courses in England may qualify for non-income assessed grants from the NHS LSF. Receipt of the LSF does not impact eligibility for support from SFE."^[source]

The same document explains why: students who started nursing, midwifery or AHP courses "on or after 1 August 2017 are unable to apply for the NHS Bursary and instead can apply for the standard package of support from SFE". The Learning Support Fund was built to sit on top of that standard package, and "is available to all students attending these courses in England". In 2026/27 the maximum English Maintenance Loan is £10,830 living away from home outside London and £14,135 living away from home in London, tapering down as household income rises.^[source] Our Maintenance Loan guide and household income explainer cover how that taper works.

So a first-year adult nursing student living away from home outside London, from a household under the full-loan income threshold, is looking at the £5,000 Training Grant plus the maximum Maintenance Loan, plus TDAE for placement travel, plus £2,000 of Parental Support if they have a young child — with only the loan element repayable.

There is a bonus most students never claim, because nobody tells them: healthcare courses usually run longer than a standard academic year, and the SLC guidance notes that "Given the length of nursing, midwifery and AHP courses (exceeding 30 weeks and 3 days in an academic year), students on these courses are often entitled to long courses loan" for the extra weeks of study.^[source] If your course year is longer than 30 weeks and 3 days, ask Student Finance England about it.

NHS Bursary students: a reduced-rate loan instead

Once the NHS Bursary starts, the Maintenance Loan changes character. The Department for Education's 2026/27 guidance states: "If you're eligible to apply for NHS bursaries that depend on your household income, and you meet the student finance eligibility requirements, you can apply for a reduced rate Maintenance Loan that doesn't depend on your household income."^[source]

Two things follow from that sentence. The loan is smaller than the standard one, and it is flat — your parents' income no longer affects it, in either direction. The same guidance adds that "If you're eligible to apply for NHS bursaries that don't depend on household income you can't apply for student finance from us", so which NHS funding you are entitled to determines whether Student Finance England will deal with you at all.

The Student Loans Company's practitioner guidance spells out the trade-off in regulatory terms: students eligible for an income-assessed bursary "will not be eligible to apply for support for tuition costs (regulation 19(2)) or any grants (regulation 38(4)(a)); however, such students are eligible to apply to SFE for the non-income assessed reduced rate maintenance loan (RRML)". So in a bursary year you lose the Tuition Fee Loan and the supplementary grants, and the NHS picks up the fee instead. The published maximum RRML rates for 2026/27 are:

Table A4, Financial Memorandum AY 26/27, from the Student Loans Company's NHS guidance for 2026/27.^[source]

Put those next to the standard rates and the size of the change is obvious: a student living away from home outside London goes from up to £10,830 of means-tested Maintenance Loan to a flat £2,828, roughly a quarter. The NHS Bursary and the fee contribution are meant to make up the difference, which is why the bursary years are usually better for a student from a lower-income household and tighter for one whose household income was already reducing their loan very little.

Graduate entry medicine works slightly differently again. The SLC guidance states that "eligible students can apply for a tuition fee loan of up to £6,125 for the first academic year of their course and £5,860 in all other years of the course", that "Graduate entry medical and dental students are, however, still required to self-fund the remainder of the of the tuition fee charged in their first year", and that "In years two to four of the course, an additional contribution towards tuition fees is paid by the NHS on the student's behalf, as part of their NHS Bursary award".^[source] In year 1 they can apply for an income-assessed Maintenance Loan; from year 2 they move onto the RRML.

One consequence reaches beyond undergraduate study: an NHS bursary entitlement blocks the Postgraduate Master's Loan, which our master's funding guide sets out alongside the other exclusions.

The single most common error on this topic is treating "NHS funding" as a UK-wide scheme. It is not. The Learning Support Fund is an English scheme attached to English universities. The other three nations run their own arrangements, and in two of them the healthcare student is funded more like a trainee than like a borrower.

Scotland: the Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary

SAAS runs the Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary (PNMSB), and it is the most generous headline figure in the UK. SAAS states: "All eligible full-time students can apply for a Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary (PNMSB). This bursary is not income assessed (we do not base what you can receive on your household income)."^[source]

Read "eligible" as doing two jobs there, because the PNMSB is tied to Scotland twice over. You have to be studying in Scotland — SAAS says the bursary "is not available if you're studying in the rest of the UK (outside of Scotland)" — and you have to be a SAAS-funded student in the first place, because "If you normally live in Scotland, you'll apply to SAAS."^[source] An English student who moves to Glasgow to train gets neither this nor the Learning Support Fund: the SLC's own guidance says England-domiciled students starting nursing, midwifery or AHP courses in Scotland "are not eligible for a healthcare bursary" and "are eligible for the standard package of support from SFE only".^[source]

• Years 1, 2 and 3 of the course: £10,000.
• Year 4: £7,500 — "bursary is reduced by 25% in year 4".
• Tuition fees: "you do not need to pay tuition fees if you're studying to be a paramedic, nurse or midwife in Scotland", with SAAS paying the university directly.
• A £60 Initial Expenses Allowance in the first year, paid with the first bursary instalment.
• A bursary, not a loan. SAAS sets "a bursary" against "a student loan" as different things, and the PNMSB pages describe no repayment obligation — but we could not find a SAAS page that says in terms that it does not have to be repaid, so we are not putting those words in their mouth. It is not an SLC loan and does not join your repayment balance.

SAAS also lists a Dependants' Allowance of up to £3,640, a Single Parents' Allowance of £2,303, a Childcare Allowance of up to £2,466, DSA, and clinical placement expenses claimed on a PNMSB placement expenses form.^[source] These SAAS pages carry a last-updated date of 28 May 2025 and do not name an academic year, so check them before relying on the amounts.

Note what is not on those pages: a living-cost loan. SAAS lists the bursary, the fees and a set of grants, and no loan alongside them. We have not found a SAAS statement that a PNMSB student is barred from a living-cost loan, so we are not asserting one — confirm the position with SAAS directly. Scottish students repay on Plan 4 for any borrowing they do take.

Wales: the NHS Wales Bursary, with strings attached

Wales runs the NHS Wales Bursary Schemes through Student Award Services at NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership, which "provides funding for healthcare students on NHS funded courses in Wales and Welsh domiciled medical and dental students within the UK". Under the scheme "your full tuition fees will be covered".^[source]

Wales is the one nation that asks for something back, and it is easy to miss until you have signed: "If you are planning to study a nursing / midwifery / allied health professional (AHP) course, you will be required to commit to working in Wales for a period of time after completing your studies." That commitment is two years on a three-year course and 18 months on a two-year course. Doctors and dentists are exempt from it.

The Welsh bursary also changes what student finance you can have, which the NWSSP page does not mention. The Student Loans Company's guidance for England-domiciled students studying in Wales says that where a student signs the commitment and takes the NHS Wales bursary, "these students will only be able to access the RRML package from SFE" — the same reduced-rate loan as an English NHS Bursary student. A student who declines the commitment does not get the bursary and instead "will be able to access the standard package of support from SFE".^[source] That is a genuine fork in the road, and the SLC adds that "in normal circumstances the student will not be able to change their funding route" afterwards. Note the scope: that document covers students domiciled in England. If you are Welsh domiciled, confirm the equivalent position with Student Finance Wales before you sign.

Welsh students who do borrow remain on Plan 2, not Plan 5 — see our Wales student finance guide. We have not published NHS Wales Bursary payment rates here because the scheme pages we could reach did not state them.

Northern Ireland: Department of Health funding, and it depends on your course

In Northern Ireland the money comes from the Department of Health, but the answers are not the same for every healthcare course, and this is the one place on this page where you must read the row that matches your own course rather than the general one. What all three groups share is that "The Department of Health in Northern Ireland (DoH) will pay your tuition fees directly to the university".^[source]

Allied health, dental hygiene and dental therapy. If you've lived in Northern Ireland for the last three years, "you can apply for an income-assessed bursary to help with living costs" and "You may also be eligible to apply for a reduced rate non-income assessed loan." You apply to your Student Finance NI office, which assesses the bursary from your PN1 or PR1 student finance application.

Nursing and midwifery. The answer flips, and it flips on the point that matters most. nidirect states: "If you're from Northern Ireland, you can apply for a non-income-assessed bursary to help with living costs" and, immediately after it, "You'll not be eligible to apply for a maintenance loan." Applications go to the bursaries unit in the regional Business Services Organisation, not to Student Finance NI. So a Northern Irish nursing student training in Northern Ireland is in a different position from an allied health student sitting next to them: bursary instead of a maintenance loan, rather than bursary plus a reduced loan.

Medicine and dentistry. Northern Ireland runs this much like England, but attached to your home address rather than your medical school: "DoH will give you a bursary in your fifth and later years of study, regardless of where you study in the UK." For those years "the DoH will pay your tuition fee contribution in full", the bursary itself depends on your income, and "You will also be able to get a reduced rate, non-income assessed loan for the balance of your maintenance support." It is "administered and paid by your local Student Finance NI office on behalf of the DoH".

There is an important exception for Northern Irish students who leave to train: "If you plan to enter a degree in nursing or midwifery in England, Wales or Scotland, you should apply for tuition fee loan, maintenance loan and grant to your Student Finance NI office using a PN1 or PR1 form." If that degree is at an English university, you may also be in scope for the Learning Support Fund, because the LSF test is where you study rather than where you live. Northern Irish borrowers repay on Plan 1, covered in our Northern Ireland guide.

NHS grants and bursaries are not loans and are not collected through the payroll. The Training Grant, the Specialist Subject Payment, Parental Support, TDAE, the Exceptional Support Fund, the NHS Bursary and the devolved bursaries all come from a health body rather than from the Student Loans Company, so none of them adds to the balance your employer deducts against.

What you repay is whatever you borrowed from the SLC alongside them, on the ordinary plan for your cohort and nation, at 9% of income above the threshold:^[source]

• Plan 5 — English students who started from September 2023, which is most current nursing and midwifery students. Threshold £25,000, written off after 40 years.
• Plan 2 — English students who started between 2012 and 2023, and Welsh students. Threshold £29,385, written off after 30 years.
• Plan 4 — Scottish students. Threshold £33,795, written off after 30 years.
• Plan 1 — Northern Irish students. Threshold £26,900, written off after 25 years.

The practical effect of the grants is that a nursing graduate reaches the threshold with a smaller balance than a comparable non-healthcare graduate, because £5,000 or £6,000 a year of their living costs was never borrowed. It does not change the repayment terms themselves. NHS employment confers no forgiveness, no reduced rate and no shortened write-off period, which we cover in detail in public sector student loan myths.

For a newly qualified nurse on an Agenda for Change band, that usually means modest deductions for years and a strong chance of reaching write-off with a balance outstanding — which is worth knowing before you consider voluntary overpayments. You can model your own position with our monthly repayment calculator.

A wrong number on a funding page is worse than a missing one, so where an official source did not state a figure, we have not supplied one. These are the gaps, and where to close them:

• NHS Wales Bursary payment rates. The scheme, the full tuition fee cover and the Wales work commitment are confirmed; no payment rates are stated on the NWSSP Student Awards Services pages. Ask NWSSP Student Awards Services.
• Northern Ireland DoH bursary amounts. Which bursary applies to which course, and whether a maintenance loan comes with it, are set out above; the amounts are not published on nidirect. Ask the BSO bursaries unit for nursing and midwifery, or your Student Finance NI office for the other courses.
• Whether the Northern Irish nursing and midwifery bursary is income assessed. nidirect says both that it is not and that the amount depends on your family's income, in the same section. We have flagged the contradiction rather than guessing which is current.
• Whether a Scottish PNMSB student can also take a living-cost loan. SAAS lists no loan in the PNMSB package, but publishes no explicit exclusion either. Ask SAAS.
• Whether Learning Support Fund payments count as income in the Student Finance England household income assessment. Not stated on the scheme pages.