Nursing Careers UK

Funding · England

NHS Learning Support Fund

NHS Learning Support Fund is administered by NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA). The figures below are the published 2026/27 rates. 2 elements carry a published figure and 2 do not, so a full total cannot be computed from published figures. 4 of the nursing career paths on this site qualify.

England2026/27Undergraduate degreePre-registration master’s
Not published Most per award At least one element has no published figure, so no total can be computed
4 Elements in the scheme 2 with a published amount, 2 without
4 Professions eligible
2026/27 Figures for The academic year the published rates apply to

What it is

The NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF) is the main NHS-funded grant scheme for eligible pre-registration nursing students in England, paid on top of the standard Student Finance England tuition fee and maintenance loans. All four fields of nursing (adult, mental health, learning disability and children's) qualify for the non-repayable £5,000-a-year Training Grant, while mental health and learning disability nursing students also qualify for an additional £1,000-a-year Specialist Subject Payment restricted to a fixed list of courses. Students who continue to receive a wage or salary while training — including nursing associate apprentices and Registered Nurse Degree Apprentices — are not eligible, since LSF is designed to supplement, not duplicate, employer-paid training.

The elements below are separate awards under one scheme, and they are conditional in different ways. Some are flat payments made to everyone on an eligible course; some are assessed against household income; some reimburse costs you have already incurred and are worth nothing to you unless you incur them. Reading the scheme as a single headline figure is the mistake that leads people to budget for money they will never see.

A single total for this scheme cannot be computed from the published figures. Several elements — Parental Support and Travel and Dual Accommodation Expenses — are described in the scheme rules without a rate attached, or the rate is set individually. This page publishes what is stated and leaves the rest blank rather than estimating it; the administering body will give you a figure for your own circumstances.

Nation
England
Academic year
2026/27
Administered by
NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)
Routes funded
Undergraduate degree and Pre-registration master’s
Elements
4

What each element pays, and on what condition

The amount column is the figure the administering body publishes. Where it is blank, no rate is published — either the award is assessed individually or the guidance sets limits rather than a single sum.

Elements of the NHS Learning Support Fund
Element Amount Basis Conditions
Training Grant Some professions only £5,000 year Non-means-tested, non-repayable grant paid to eligible students on nursing (adult), nursing (child), nursing (mental health), nursing (learning disability), joint nursing/social work, joint nursing/paramedicine and midwifery pre-registration programmes. Applies to adult nurse , mental health nurse , children's nurse , learning disability nurse .
Specialist Subject Payment Some professions only £1,000 year Paid in addition to the Training Grant, but restricted to a fixed list of courses for students starting after 1 September 2020: mental health nursing, learning disability nursing, diagnostic or therapeutic radiography, prosthetics and orthotics, orthoptics, and podiatry. Adult and children's nursing students are not eligible for this payment. Applies to mental health nurse , learning disability nurse .
Parental Support Some professions only Not published Not stated Additional non-repayable support for eligible LSF recipients who are the parent or main carer of a child dependant, paid alongside the Training Grant. Applies to adult nurse , mental health nurse , children's nurse , learning disability nurse .
Travel and Dual Accommodation Expenses Some professions only Not published Not stated Reimbursement of excess travel costs to a practice placement and, where a student must maintain a second address to attend one, dual accommodation costs, for eligible LSF recipients. Applies to adult nurse , mental health nurse , children's nurse , learning disability nurse .

Work out what you would get

This is arithmetic on the scheme’s own published figures, and nothing else. Elements published on the same basis — here, per award — are added together. Where the scheme publishes more than one rate for the same payment, only the highest is counted, because you can only receive one of them. Elements published on a different basis are listed separately below and not added, because adding a per-claim reimbursement to an annual grant would produce a number that means nothing.

A total appears only where every element in the group carries a published figure. If one does not, the components that exist are still shown and the total is left uncomputed. That is the honest position: an incomplete sum presented as a total is worse than no total at all, because you would budget against it.

Every eligible profession

  • Parental Support — no figure published
  • Travel and Dual Accommodation Expenses — no figure published

No amount is published for any of these elements, so there is nothing to add up. The scheme is real and the entitlements are real — the rates are simply assessed individually rather than published as a table.

Applies identically to these 4 professions.

Who qualifies

The scheme funds the undergraduate degree and pre-registration master’s route s. If you are training by another route, this is not the scheme that applies to you — compare the routes for your profession before you apply.

What does not qualify

Exclusions decide more applications than entitlements do. Read them before you commit to a course on the assumption that it is funded.

How it works with student loans

Paid on top of, not instead of, the standard Student Finance England tuition fee and maintenance loans available to nursing students — the LSF grants are non-repayable and additional to loan entitlement.

This is the part applicants most often get wrong, and getting it wrong is expensive: apply for the wrong student finance product and you can end up with less money, no entitlement to the scheme on this page, and a course already under way. Check which product your specific course is designated for with the university before you submit anything, because designation is set course by course rather than by the award name.

How this compares with the rest of the UK

The same course can be funded on four different bases depending on where you study. If you are choosing between universities in different nations, this is a bigger financial difference than tuition fee headlines suggest.

The other nations

Carry on from here

Where this page’s data comes from

Figures published by NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) for 2026/27. Rules change every academic year — confirm with the scheme’s own guidance before you rely on any figure here.