London: In a path-breaking move which would benefit thousands of nurses from Kerala who wish to work in Britain, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has decided to ease the norms for clearing the English competency exam. From now on, nurses need to score only 6.5 level for the writing module of IELTS (International English Language Testing System), which is the basic qualification for nursing registration in the United Kingdom. Earlier, the cut-off was 7.
Around 80 per cent of the nurses who took the IELTS exam used to fail in the writing module.
Even though the overall score will remain at 7, reducing the cut-off for writing to 6.5 will help thousands of Keralite nurses dreaming of working in the UK.
The new norms will be cleared at the next meeting of NMC and will come into effect from January 1, said NMC in a press release.
Under the new proposals, candidates have to score level 7 for listening, reading and speaking but need only 6.5 for writing. However, there is no change in the rule that the minimum overall score should be 7.
With the validity of IELTS exam being two years, nurses who wrote the exam after January 2017 and scored the required points under the new proposals can start their registration.
It may seem that an allowance of 0.5 points is a minor issue. But in reality it is a decision of historic proportions because a majority of candidates found the writing exam too tough. This matter came to the notice of the NMC, prompting it to change rules. There are several Malayali nurses who have cleared all other exams except writing.
Britain has around 40,000 vacancies for nurses, but has been unable find suitable candidates even after exploring various other options. This finally forced NMC to ease the norms regarding the writing exam.
In addition to IELTS, candidates have to clear two other exams for nursing registration in the UK. One is the online competency test which can be done from Kerala and the other the practical exam conducted in Britain. Both these tests are very easy compared to IELTS and can be attempted multiple times.
The new rules are also expected to lead to another large-scale migration of Malayali nurses to Britain.
