NHS Bursary 2026/27: How Much You Get and Who Qualifies

Last updated: 8 November 2026 · Figures verified against NHSBSA, DHSC and Student Finance Wales guidance for 2026/27.

By the NHS Bands Pay editorial team

The phrase “NHS bursary” causes more confusion than almost any other in student funding, because it means four different things in four different nations, and a fifth thing for medical and dental students. The old bursary, a means-tested payment with a reduced loan, ended for new nursing students in England in 2017. What replaced it is a grant that sits on top of ordinary student finance, not instead of it. Scotland kept a bursary model and made it more generous. Wales kept a bursary model and attached a work commitment to it. Northern Ireland funds nursing through commissioned places. And medicine and dentistry kept a bursary of their own, which only starts in the later years of the course. This page sets out every scheme for 2026/27: the amounts, who qualifies, what else you can claim alongside, when the money arrives, and what you commit to by taking it. Every figure is for the 2026/27 academic year unless stated otherwise, and every figure is sourced from the body that pays it.

The four-nation picture at a glance

Start with the table, because it shows why the nation where you study matters as much as the course. The figures are the headline annual grant or bursary for a full-time student in 2026/27, before any extras such as parental support or dependants' allowances, and before student loans.

Read the table with care, because the headline amounts are not like for like. England's £8,000 is the maximum standard Learning Support Fund package: the £5,000 training grant plus the £1,000 specialist subject payment plus £2,000 of parental support. Most students get the £5,000 grant only, and the loan still has to be repaid. Scotland's £10,000 is a single non-means-tested bursary, and it comes with fees paid, so the student leaves with far less debt. Wales' £3,643 is the most you can get in cash, the £1,000 grant plus the maximum means-tested bursary, but fees are also paid, and the price is the work commitment. Northern Ireland's £5,165 is the latest published figure found, not a confirmed 2026/27 rate, so treat it as a guide and confirm it with the Bursary Administration Unit. The sections below give each scheme in full, and the student nurse finance guide works through the same figures as a budget, with loans, placement costs and the cost of living alongside.

England: the Learning Support Fund

The Learning Support Fund, LSF, is the package of non-repayable grants that funds nursing, midwifery and allied health students in England. It is run by the NHS Business Services Authority, NHSBSA, on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, and it is designed to supplement your income, not to replace student finance. You still take a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan through the ordinary student finance system, and the fund is extra money on top. It is not means tested, it never goes on your student debt balance, and you do not pay it back.

The training grant is the core of the fund: £5,000 per academic year, or £416.67 a month, for every eligible full-time student. Part-time students get a pro rata amount. It is paid in three instalments across the year, about £1,666.67 a time. The specialist subject payment adds £1,000 a year, or £83.33 a month, for students on courses linked to a shortage profession: mental health nursing, learning disability nursing, diagnostic or therapeutic radiography, prosthetics and orthotics, orthoptics and podiatry, including dual-qualification courses that incorporate one of those subjects from the start. Adult nursing, child nursing and midwifery are not on the list, and the payment is only for courses starting after 1 September 2020. Parental support adds £2,000 a year, or £166.67 a month, for students with parental responsibility for at least one dependent child under 15, or under 17 if registered with special educational needs. It is £2,000 a year however many qualifying children you have. The exceptional support fund offers up to £3,000 a year for unexpected hardship, awarded at NHSBSA's discretion. Put the first three together and the maximum standard package is £8,000 a year, or £666.67 a month. In an exceptional year with hardship support, the total can reach £11,000, but that is not a figure to budget on.

Two further elements complete the fund. Travel and dual accommodation expenses, TDAE, reimburse excess travel and temporary accommodation costs on placement: the extra cost of getting to a placement beyond your normal travel, and the cost of a second place to stay when a placement is too far to commute. Claims must normally be made within six months of the cost being incurred. And since 1 September 2025, undergraduate pharmacy and pre-registration healthcare science students can claim the TDAE element only: they are not eligible for the training grant, the specialist subject payment, parental support or the exceptional support fund. The full list of eligible courses is: nursing in all four fields, adult, child, mental health and learning disability, plus joint nursing and nursing with social work; midwifery; dietetics; dental therapy and dental hygiene; occupational therapy; operating department practice; orthoptics; orthotics and prosthetics; paramedicine, except DipHE and foundation degree courses; physiotherapy; podiatry and chiropody; radiography, diagnostic and therapeutic; and speech and language therapy. Foundation years are not eligible for any part of the fund.

Eligibility is borrowed from the student finance system. You must be eligible for student finance support through any of the four UK funders, Student Finance England, Student Finance Wales, SAAS or Student Finance NI, even if you choose not to take a loan. That means Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish funded students at English universities can qualify. You cannot get the fund if you receive the NHS Bursary, or if an NHS employer pays you to study. If you interrupt your course, your university reports your last date of attendance and NHSBSA recalculates your entitlement for the period you were enrolled; if you return in the same academic year you do not need to reapply, but if you return in a new academic year you do. The student loan repayments on NHS pay guide explains what happens to the loan side of the package once you qualify and start earning, and the student loan calculator works out the monthly deduction for any salary and plan.

England: the NHS Bursary for medical and dental students

The NHS Bursary is a different scheme with the same name, and it is only for medical and dental students. It funds the later years of a medicine or dentistry degree: year 5 onwards of a five-year or longer undergraduate course, years 2 to 3 of an accelerated three-year course, and years 2 to 4 of an accelerated four-year course. The earlier years are funded through standard student finance. In a bursary year, NHSBSA pays a contribution to your tuition fees and a grant and bursary towards living costs, and you can still take a reduced-rate maintenance loan.

Every eligible student gets the full £1,081 grant regardless of household income. The means-tested bursary depends on household income, so many students get less than the maximum. On top of the living-cost money, NHSBSA pays a tuition fee contribution direct to the university: up to £9,790 a year for an undergraduate course lasting five or six years, and up to £3,930 a year for a graduate-entry course lasting three or four years. The rules are published one academic year at a time under the NHS Bursary Scheme rules, 15th edition for 2026 to 2027, and the Department of Health and Social Care warns not to rely on them when planning later years. Apply to NHSBSA within nine months of the start of each bursary year. Students from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland should check with their own funding body, because the arrangements differ. For what those later years lead to, see the FY1 and FY2 doctor salary guide and the NHS dentist salary guide, and for the training grant that foundation dentists receive once employed, £13,392 in 2026/27, see the dental core training pay guide.

Scotland: the £10,000 bursary

Scotland runs the most generous headline package in the UK. Eligible students on pre-registration nursing, midwifery and paramedic science degrees in Scotland are funded through the Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary, PNMSB, administered by the Student Awards Agency Scotland, SAAS. The bursary is not income assessed: every eligible student gets the full amount regardless of parental income. It is £10,000 a year in years 1 to 3 and £7,500 in year 4 of a four-year honours degree, reflecting the different structure of that year, and tuition fees are paid direct for eligible Scottish-domiciled students. That is £833.33 a month in the first three years and £625.00 a month in the fourth. Paramedic degrees run for three years, so paramedic students get £10,000 in each of the three years. The bursary is not a loan and is not repaid, and you must reapply for it each year of the course.

Extra income-assessed allowances exist on top of the bursary. Dependants' allowance pays up to £3,640 a year for a first adult dependant or a first child, and £557 for each extra dependant, with a deduction for the dependant's income above a threshold. Single parents' allowance pays £2,303 a year for students bringing up a child on their own. Childcare allowance pays up to £2,466 a year for registered childcare, though SAAS will not pay any childcare allowance from the date maternity leave starts, and the bursary itself can continue for up to 45 weeks of maternity leave. Clinical placement expenses can also be claimed. The scheme is Scotland-study only: it is not available to students studying in other parts of the UK. Because the system is designed around the bursary rather than the loan, do not assume you can simply add a large English-style maintenance loan on top. Confirm the figures for your programme and year with SAAS before you budget. The Scottish pay picture once you qualify is in the Scotland pay guide, and the four-nation pay comparison sets the Scottish scales against England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Wales: the NHS Wales Bursary Scheme

Wales keeps a bursary model with a distinctive condition attached. Under the NHS Wales Bursary Scheme, eligible students on healthcare courses in Wales have their tuition fees paid and receive a non-means-tested NHS grant of £1,000 a year towards living costs, plus a means-tested bursary of up to £2,643 a year if living away from the parental home, or up to £2,207 a year if living in the parental home. The maximum applies at household income of £18,000 or less, and falls to nil at £50,000 or over. Alongside the bursary, students can take a reduced maintenance loan from Student Finance Wales: up to £11,570 a year living away from the parental home, £9,665 living in the parental home, or £14,700 in London, in 2026/27. The maximum cash from the bursary itself is therefore £3,643 a year, £1,000 grant plus £2,643 means-tested bursary, with fees paid on top.

The condition is the commitment to work in Wales after qualifying. Accepting the bursary generally means agreeing to work in NHS Wales for two years after registration for a three-year course, and eighteen months for a two-year course, starting within three months of completing. Students have ten weeks from the start of the course to change their mind and opt out, taking standard student finance instead, but then they lose the fee payment and the bursary elements. The commitment is a genuine contractual tie, not a vague aspiration: the scheme terms, version 5 of May 2025, set a fixed repayment of £8,500 for each year of funding if the commitment is broken, £25,500 for a three-year course and £17,000 for a two-year course, with a sliding scale if you leave a Welsh post early and case-by-case exemptions, for example where no suitable post was available despite reasonable efforts, ill health prevents working in the profession, or caring responsibilities changed or began during the course. Read clauses 10 to 12 and Schedule 2 of the terms before you sign, and ask NHS Wales directly about anything unclear: Student Finance Wales does not hold the terms. The Welsh pay picture once you qualify is in the Wales pay guide.

Northern Ireland: commissioned places

Northern Ireland funds nursing and midwifery through commissioned places. The Department of Health pays the tuition fees for eligible students on commissioned courses, and students receive a non-means-tested bursary. The latest published figure found is £5,165 a year, but no 2026/27 confirmation was located at the time of writing, so treat £5,165 as the latest published figure and confirm the current rate with the Bursary Administration Unit before you budget. While receiving the bursary, students are generally not eligible for a maintenance loan, which is the key structural difference from England. The wider pay context matters too: Northern Ireland's 2026/27 Agenda for Change uplift was recommended but had not been implemented at the time of writing, and the RCN strike ballot on the unpaid award closed on 20 November 2026. See the Northern Ireland pay guide for the position on qualified pay.

What the money adds up to over a whole course

Annual figures hide the real difference between the schemes, because the schemes run for different lengths and sit on top of different loan arrangements. The table below totals the headline grant or bursary over a standard three-year degree, before loans, parental support, allowances and hardship funds, and before tuition fees, which are paid under the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish schemes and covered by a loan in England.

Scotland is £6,000 ahead of England's maximum standard package over three years, and £15,000 ahead of the training grant alone, and the Scottish student also leaves with no tuition fee debt, while the English student leaves with three years of tuition fee loans plus a maintenance loan. Wales looks smallest in cash, £10,929 over three years against £15,000 for the English training grant alone, but the Welsh student also has fees paid and a reduced loan, and the cash figure is the maximum: at household income of £50,000 or over, the means-tested element is nil and only the £1,000 grant remains, £3,000 over three years. A four-year honours degree in Scotland pays £37,500 in total, £10,000 in each of the first three years and £7,500 in the fourth. For medical and dental students, the NHS Bursary only covers the later years, so a five-year medicine course gets two bursary years: up to £9,056 in London, £4,528 a year, plus up to £19,580 of fee contribution. These totals are the grant and bursary money only. They do not include student loans, which are repayable, and they do not include the salary that starts when you qualify: a newly qualified nurse starts on Band 5, £32,073 a year in England in 2026/27, or £2,672.75 a month gross. See the newly qualified nurse pay guide for the full first-year picture.

How to apply and when

Deadlines are the part students most often get wrong, because each scheme runs its own clock and the clocks are short. In England, you need a Learning Support Fund account to apply, and you keep the account and reapply each year. Register the account within one calendar month of the start of your active study in that academic year, and apply for the fund's provisions within six months of the start of your academic year. Registering is not applying: the two deadlines are separate, and missing either one loses the entitlement for that year. Continuing students get an email to reapply so they can apply in time for the start of the academic year. For the 2026/27 academic year, if your course or academic year starts in September or October 2026, the main payment dates are 17 November 2026 for term 1, 16 March 2027 for term 2 and 20 July 2027 for term 3. If you start after September or October, your payment dates are different and depend on when you started and whether your university confirmed your attendance. For the medical and dental NHS Bursary, apply to NHSBSA within nine months of the start of each bursary year. In Scotland, apply to SAAS each year for the bursary and the tuition fee grant, once you have a confirmed offer of a place. In Wales, apply through the NHS Wales Student Awards Service, and remember the ten-week window from the start of the course to opt out of the bursary scheme. In Northern Ireland, apply through the Bursary Administration Unit. Do not apply on any other system: NHSBSA warns that applications made elsewhere will be rejected.

What happens after you qualify

The bursary ends when the course ends, and the salary starts. A newly qualified nurse in England starts on Band 5 at £32,073 a year, £2,672.75 a month gross, and the Band 5 pay guide sets out the steps, the hourly rate and the unsocial-hours enhancements that follow. Student loan repayments start once earnings pass the threshold for your plan: for Plan 2, 9% of earnings above £29,385 a year, which is £20.16 a month on a Band 5 entry salary. The grants you received as a student are never repaid, and they never appear on your payslip. If you trained through a paid route instead, the nursing degree apprenticeship pay guide covers earning a salary while you train, and the trainee nursing associate pay guide covers the paid two-year route into a registered support role. For the full budgeting picture as a student, including loans, placement costs and the cost of living, see the student nurse finance guide.

Frequently asked questions

How much is the NHS bursary in 2026/27?

It depends on where you study, because there is no single UK-wide NHS bursary. In England, eligible nursing, midwifery and allied health students get a non-repayable training grant of £5,000 a year through the Learning Support Fund, plus up to £1,000 a year for shortage subjects and £2,000 a year of parental support, so the maximum standard package is £8,000 a year. In Scotland, eligible nursing, midwifery and paramedic students get a £10,000-a-year bursary in years 1 to 3 and £7,500 in year 4, with tuition fees paid. In Wales, the NHS bursary covers tuition fees plus a £1,000-a-year grant and a means-tested bursary of up to £2,643 a year. In Northern Ireland, commissioned nursing places carry a non-means-tested bursary, latest published figure £5,165 a year, which you should confirm with the Bursary Administration Unit before budgeting.

Who can get an NHS bursary?

In England, the Learning Support Fund is for students on approved pre-registration undergraduate or postgraduate courses: nursing in all four fields, midwifery, dietetics, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, podiatry, radiography, speech and language therapy, orthoptics, orthotics and prosthetics, operating department practice, dental therapy and hygiene, and paramedicine (but not DipHE or foundation degree paramedic courses). Foundation years are not eligible. The separate NHS Bursary is only for medical and dental students in the later years of their course: year 5 onwards of a five-year or longer undergraduate course, or years 2 to 4 of an accelerated graduate-entry course. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each run their own schemes with their own course lists, so check the scheme for the nation where you study.

Is the NHS bursary repayable?

No. The training grant, the specialist subject payment, parental support and the bursaries in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are grants, not loans, and you do not pay them back. Your student loan is separate and is repayable on the usual terms. The one exception to watch is Wales: the NHS Wales bursary comes with a commitment to work in NHS Wales after qualifying, two years for a three-year course, and if you break that commitment you can be charged £8,500 for each year of funding, £25,500 for a three-year course. England, Scotland and Northern Ireland have no equivalent work commitment.

Can you get the NHS bursary and a student loan?

Yes, in England. The Learning Support Fund sits on top of ordinary student finance: you still take a tuition fee loan and a maintenance loan in the usual way, and the £5,000 training grant is extra, non-repayable money. You must qualify for student finance support to be eligible for the fund, even if you choose not to take the loan. In Scotland the bursary is designed to replace most loan need, so do not assume you can add a large English-style maintenance loan on top. In Wales you can take a reduced maintenance loan alongside the bursary. In Northern Ireland you are generally not eligible for a maintenance loan while receiving the commissioned-place bursary.

What is the Learning Support Fund?

The Learning Support Fund is the package of non-repayable grants that funds nursing, midwifery and allied health students in England, run by the NHS Business Services Authority. It has five elements: a training grant of £5,000 per academic year; a specialist subject payment of £1,000 a year for shortage courses; parental support of £2,000 a year for students with a dependent child under 15, or under 17 with special educational needs; travel and dual accommodation expenses, which reimburse excess placement travel and temporary accommodation costs; and an exceptional support fund of up to £3,000 a year for unexpected hardship. Since 1 September 2025, pharmacy and healthcare science students can claim the travel and accommodation element only, not the other four.

How much bursary do student nurses get in Scotland?

Eligible nursing, midwifery and paramedic students in Scotland get a non-means-tested bursary of £10,000 a year in years 1 to 3 and £7,500 in year 4 of a four-year honours degree, paid through the Student Awards Agency Scotland under the Paramedic, Nursing and Midwifery Student Bursary scheme, with tuition fees paid direct. That is £833.33 a month in the first three years and £625.00 a month in the fourth. Extra income-assessed allowances exist for students with dependants, single parents and childcare costs: up to £3,640 a year of dependants' allowance for a first adult or child, £2,303 a year of single parents' allowance and up to £2,466 a year of childcare allowance. Confirm the current figures with SAAS before budgeting.

What is the NHS Wales bursary commitment?

Taking the NHS Wales bursary means agreeing to work in NHS Wales after qualifying: two years for a three-year course and eighteen months for a two-year course, starting within three months of completing. You have ten weeks from the start of your course to opt out and take standard student finance instead, but then you lose the fee payment and the bursary elements. If you break the commitment, the terms set a fixed repayment of £8,500 for each year of funding, £25,500 for a three-year course and £17,000 for a two-year course, with a sliding scale if you leave a Welsh post early and case-by-case exemptions, for example where no suitable post was available or ill health prevents working in the profession. Read clauses 10 to 12 and Schedule 2 of the scheme terms before you sign.

When do bursary payments arrive?

For the Learning Support Fund in England, if your course or academic year starts in September or October 2026, the main payment dates for 2026/27 are 17 November 2026 for term 1, 16 March 2027 for term 2 and 20 July 2027 for term 3. The £5,000 training grant is paid in three instalments across the year, about £1,666.67 a time, and the specialist subject payment is also paid in three instalments. You must register a Learning Support Fund account within one calendar month of the start of your active study, and apply within six months of the start of your academic year, or you lose the entitlement for that year. For the medical and dental NHS Bursary, apply within nine months of the start of each bursary year. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own payment schedules.

Sources and independence

Source: NHS Business Services Authority, NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF).

Source: Department of Health and Social Care, NHS financial support for health students: NHS Learning Support Fund (10th edition, 2026 to 2027), published 24 July 2026.

Source: Department of Health and Social Care, The NHS Bursary Scheme new rules (15th edition) for the academic year 2026 to 2027, published 22 July 2026.

Source: Student Finance Wales, NHS guidance Wales, academic year 2026/27.

Source: Cardiff University, NHS Wales Bursary Scheme.

Source: University of Stirling, Nursing and paramedic science fees.

NHS Bands Pay is an independent guide and is not affiliated with the NHS. Figures were verified against official sources on 8 November 2026 and can change, always confirm with the relevant official body before making financial decisions. The Northern Ireland bursary figure is the latest published figure found, not a confirmed 2026/27 rate.