NURSES AND TEACHERS
Sus,—In your issue of August 27th, on page 272, there are two weighty letters on Nurses' Grievances from persons obviously well qualified to speak. On page 285 there is an advertisement "issued by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour and National Service" describ- ing conditions offered to women by the Emergency Teacher Training Scheme. The genesis of the advertisement is, of course, well-known. It is occasioned by the regrettable short-sightedness displayed during the past three years by the Ministry of Education, which was apparently blissfully unaware that the rapidly rising birthrate (which had become
glaringly obvious by ‘hat :imc) would, in a very few years, make an immense addition to the population of children in the junior schools, an addition which, in a recent answer to me, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry estimated at 720,000 by 1953. Women 'teachers are almost exclusively called for in junior schools, and this advertisement exhibits all the signs of panic in the Ministry, which had been caught napping so grievously. The advertisement offers to women between the ages of 21 and 35 (or even older) who need present "no formal qualifi- cations" of preliminary education, and are subject to no examinational tests, "an intensive one-year course with free tuition, generous main- tenance grant, plus out-of-pocket expense allowance of about f,2 per week," and "on the successful completion of the course," admission to the national schools "with the rank of qualified teacher."
Contrast that rosy prospect with the picture of the nurses' position sketched by your correspondents on page 272, and it will not be, I think, difficult to discern why our hospitals, at a time when their double or treble bed-expansion is imperative for the fulfilment of the N.H.S. Act, are unable through shortage of nurses to fully use their far too few existing beds. In an answer to me (Hansard June 3rd, 1948) Mr. Bevan declared that "on 31st March, 1948, the latest date for which figures were available, about one-ninth of the total beds in the hospitals of England and Wales were unoccupied for lack of staff."—! am, &c.,
Previous page
