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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2017/jun/13/the-guardian-view-on-public-sector-staff-shortages-losing-the-numbers
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| The Guardian view on public sector staff shortages: losing the numbers | The Guardian view on public sector staff shortages: losing the numbers |
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| Shiny new buildings and cutting-edge technology make a difference. But ultimately schools and hospitals will only ever be as good as the people who work in them. The challenge facing stretched public services is often measured in pounds and pence for good reason: the NHS in England is facing its tightest financial settlement since its inception, and Theresa May took her party into the election pledging real-terms cuts to school budgets of 6.5% by 2020. Council funding for social care has fallen by more than 10% since 2010. | Shiny new buildings and cutting-edge technology make a difference. But ultimately schools and hospitals will only ever be as good as the people who work in them. The challenge facing stretched public services is often measured in pounds and pence for good reason: the NHS in England is facing its tightest financial settlement since its inception, and Theresa May took her party into the election pledging real-terms cuts to school budgets of 6.5% by 2020. Council funding for social care has fallen by more than 10% since 2010. |
| But a lack of cash is not the only immediate problem: we are not training enough doctors, nurses or teachers for the future. There is an overall shortage of 30,000 nurses in the English NHS and, according to the Royal College of Nursing, one in nine nursing posts are now unfilled. Despite the emphasis on shifting care from hospitals into the community, the number of GPs and district nurses has fallen. There were over 80,000 vacancies in social care in England in 2015. | But a lack of cash is not the only immediate problem: we are not training enough doctors, nurses or teachers for the future. There is an overall shortage of 30,000 nurses in the English NHS and, according to the Royal College of Nursing, one in nine nursing posts are now unfilled. Despite the emphasis on shifting care from hospitals into the community, the number of GPs and district nurses has fallen. There were over 80,000 vacancies in social care in England in 2015. |
| Schools face similar issues. The government has missed its teacher training targets for secondary school teachers five years in a row, with particular problems in maths, physics and computing. By 2022, schools could face a collective shortage of up to 19,000 heads and deputy heads and other senior school leaders. Immigration policy is further tightening the screw. The NHS has long relied on an immigrant workforce: from the 1960s, nurses were recruited in large numbers from Commonwealth countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Today, almost one in three NHS doctors and one in eight registered nurses trained abroad, and nearly one in five care workers were born outside the UK. In education, one in six newly qualified teachers in 2015 qualified abroad. Yet Brexit is putting off European-born workers from coming to work in the public sector. In April, just 46 EU nurses registered to work in the UK, a massive fall of 96% in just nine months. Understaffed public services endanger lives and undermine children’s life chances. The independent inquiry into the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust found that inadequate staffing levels directly contributed to terrible standards of care: patients left without basic pain relief and in soiled sheeting for hours on end. And it’s often the least well-served areas that suffer the most. A shortage of clinicians results in maternity and emergency services closing not in prestigious teaching hospitals but in small community hospitals in rural areas. Schools in the most disadvantaged areas outside London are the ones that struggle most to recruit good teachers and leaders. | Schools face similar issues. The government has missed its teacher training targets for secondary school teachers five years in a row, with particular problems in maths, physics and computing. By 2022, schools could face a collective shortage of up to 19,000 heads and deputy heads and other senior school leaders. Immigration policy is further tightening the screw. The NHS has long relied on an immigrant workforce: from the 1960s, nurses were recruited in large numbers from Commonwealth countries such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Today, almost one in three NHS doctors and one in eight registered nurses trained abroad, and nearly one in five care workers were born outside the UK. In education, one in six newly qualified teachers in 2015 qualified abroad. Yet Brexit is putting off European-born workers from coming to work in the public sector. In April, just 46 EU nurses registered to work in the UK, a massive fall of 96% in just nine months. Understaffed public services endanger lives and undermine children’s life chances. The independent inquiry into the scandal at Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust found that inadequate staffing levels directly contributed to terrible standards of care: patients left without basic pain relief and in soiled sheeting for hours on end. And it’s often the least well-served areas that suffer the most. A shortage of clinicians results in maternity and emergency services closing not in prestigious teaching hospitals but in small community hospitals in rural areas. Schools in the most disadvantaged areas outside London are the ones that struggle most to recruit good teachers and leaders. |
| This requires bold policy changes. The government must urgently remove public service jobs from the immigration cap. It should be investing significantly more in training greater numbers of public servants: the number of young people who want to be doctors and nurses far exceeds the number of training places. And it needs to address the fact that public sector real pay has fallen steeply, affecting morale and retention: so much so that a nurse’s starting salary in 2020 will be 12% lower than it was a decade earlier. That problem just got more serious on Tuesday when inflation rose to 2.9%. Teaching our children, caring for older people, looking after the sick – these are some of the most important jobs going in any society. The government needs to start acting like it. | This requires bold policy changes. The government must urgently remove public service jobs from the immigration cap. It should be investing significantly more in training greater numbers of public servants: the number of young people who want to be doctors and nurses far exceeds the number of training places. And it needs to address the fact that public sector real pay has fallen steeply, affecting morale and retention: so much so that a nurse’s starting salary in 2020 will be 12% lower than it was a decade earlier. That problem just got more serious on Tuesday when inflation rose to 2.9%. Teaching our children, caring for older people, looking after the sick – these are some of the most important jobs going in any society. The government needs to start acting like it. |
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