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NETS 2024
The National Education Training Survey (NETS) is the only national survey open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students and trainees undertaking a practice placement, training post or work-based learning in healthcare as part of their education and training programme.
Significant updates have been made the NETS Reporting Tool in response to your feedback. The guide to help you use the reporting tool is in the related documents section below.
How does the NETS improve education quality?
We work regionally and nationally with education and placement providers to understand the quality of the education and training taking place within healthcare learning environments for all our healthcare learners. The NETS results provide critical insights into the quality of the learning environment through the eyes of the learners.
The intelligence that we collect provides assurance that the quality of healthcare education and training meets the standards within NHS England’s Education Quality Framework and that the learning environment is safe for learners, educators and patients. Research has demonstrated that safer care is provided in high quality learning environments. We use the NETS data to give us valuable insight into whether learning environments are safe for learners, e.g. are learners being supervised, do learners have an induction, do learners see examples of safe care, and do learners know how to raise concerns.
NETS 2024 Key Themes
The 2024 survey results noted an improvement across several key education quality measures, including overall educational experience, induction and supervision.
The number of learners reporting a positive overall educational experience increased from 85% in 2023 to 87% in 2024.
86% of respondents reported a positive induction experience in 2024.
Overall quality of supervision has remained largely static since the survey began in 2019 with 89% of learners reporting a positive experience in 2024.
86% of respondents reported sufficient access to learning opportunities in 2024 with 88% able to access multidisciplinary learning from other professions.
Access to a group or forum with other learners has steadily increased from 70% in 2019 to 77% in 2024.
The results highlight a concern in the number of learners reporting the negative impact of workload on their learning in 2024. This measure has steadily declined since 2019 (apart from a slight improvement in 2023) with 59% of respondents reporting a negative impact in 2024.
However, 88% of learners felt that education and training was valued by their employer or training provider in 2024. 75% of respondents would recommend their placement or training post as a place to work or train citing the following top five reasons:
Supportive colleagues (80%)
Adequate education, teaching and/or coaching (77%)
Supportive learning environment (71%)
Adequate supervision of clinical duties (70%)
Learning opportunities available (66%)
30% of learners considered leaving their education or training programme is 2024. This is slightly improved from 32% in 2023. When asked why, learners cited the following top five reasons:
Lack of learning opportunities (55%)
Inadequate education, teaching and/or coaching (54%)
Culture of learning environment (52%)
Rota or staffing issues (50%)
Workload too high (45%)
In comparison, learners cited stress of the situation, workload and overwhelmed by the situation as the top three reasons for considering leaving in 2023.
77% of learners confirmed they knew how to access health and wellbeing resources in their organisation with 70% feeling able to do so. Both measures have steadily increased since the two questions were introduced to the survey in 2022.
Workload is a concern with 59% of respondents reporting their workload as either too busy (54%) or too quiet (5%) to provide the required learning opportunities.
The actions set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan is our commitment to improving the quality of healthcare education and training and reduce course leaving rates. We will continue to work in partnership with education and training providers, royal colleges and health and care learners and educators across England to understand and address the reasons learners leave training and the variation in their experiences.
We also use the NETS results to support our ongoing efforts to embed a culture of safety and continuous improvement. By enhancing learner engagement and learner retention we will strengthen patient safety capacity and capability across the system. This approach ensures that we can continue to build and support a workforce that is equipped to drive safety improvements, now and into the future which aligns with our work delivering The NHS Patient Safety Strategy.
79% of learners were not expected to complete unsupervised activities or tasks for which they were not prepared or trained for. This is comparable with the NETS results in 2023 and 2022 but has declined since 2021.
90% of respondents saw examples of safe care with 53% encouraged to suggest how care could be improved.
Still only one third of learners (36%) are able to access to simulation and immersive learning opportunities. This is a small improvement on 34% in 2023 and 33% in 2022.
The NHS Patient Safety Strategy describes how the NHS will continuously improve patient safety, building on the foundations of a safer culture and safer systems, and sets out how the NHS will support staff and providers to share safety insight and empower people – patients and staff – with the skills, confidence and mechanisms to improve safety. A key workstream of the NHS patient Safety Strategy is the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus. The syllabus outlines a learning pathway to patient safety emphasising a proactive approach to identifying risks to safe care while also including systems thinking and human factors. Levels 1 and 2 are available to all NHS staff, learners and colleagues working across the healthcare sector on the eLearning for Healthcare hub.
In 2024, 95% of learners knew how to raise concerns in their placement or training organisation with 81% feeling comfortable to do so. 76% of respondents confirmed that they knew how to access support from a local Freedom to Speak Up Guardian. This is an improvement from 70% in 2023 and 65% in 2022.
16% of learners experienced bullying and harassment in 2024 with 30% reporting this to their education, placement or training provider. The number of learners reporting bullying and harassment has steadily increased from 25% in 2019. 45% of learners reporting experience of bullying and harassment felt that the organisation dealt with their concern.
19% of respondents confirmed experiencing discrimination by patients in 2024 compared with 21% in 2023. 22% reported their experience to their education, placement or training provider, which is a slight improvement on 20% in 2023 and 18% in 2022. 16% of learners reporting discrimination felt that the organisation dealt with their concern.
4% of learners experienced or witnessed unwanted, harmful and/or inappropriate sexual behaviours by other staff in their placement or training environment. 13% of learners experienced or witnessed unwanted, harmful and/or inappropriate sexual behaviours by patients in their placement or training environment. 27% reported their experience to their education, placement or training provider with 32% feeling that the organisation took appropriate and timely action.
We must ensure high-quality education and training that is equitable and inclusive is available to all healthcare professionals at each stage of their career. Tackling discrimination and ensuring learners are placed in safe and supportive environments needs to remain an urgent priority to develop a sustainable future workforce. The 2024 NHS England Deans’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee Summary provides an overview of our work to drive forward action in this area.
As part of work to eliminate inequalities in education and training, we include targeted questions in the Provider Self-Assessment to explore our providers’ activity around EDI. The majority of placement providers (98%) have an EDI lead, ensure reporting mechanisms take learners into account (96%), and have policies in place to manage discriminatory behaviour (99%) and sexual harassment (94%). Further, 97% of organisations report they have signed up to the NHS England Sexual Safety in Healthcare Organisational Charter and 91% have a designated sexual safety lead. Organisations self-report a range of successful EDI achievements across a spectrum of focused initiatives that raise awareness, provide training, improve staff experience, support staff development, and improve data collection. A significant amount of work has been undertaken to promote the role of Freedom to Speak Up Guardian (FTSUG). 99% of providers confirmed that a dedicated Guardian is in post and actively promotes organisational processes to raise concerns; however, just 91% of providers report that all staff, including learners, are able to speak up if they have concerns, without fear of negative consequence – a decrease from 2023 (94%) and 2022 (98%). Whilst 93% of organisations report their culture is one in which all staff, including learners, are treated fairly, with equity, consistency, dignity and respect and 98% report their environment is one that ensures the safety of all staff, including learners on placement; there is much work to do to enable psychologically safe environments for learners to feel comfortable raising concerns.
Launched in 2023, the Safe Learning Environment Charter supports the development of positive safety cultures and continuous learning across all learning environments in the NHS. The Charter sets out the supportive learning environment required to allow learners to become well-rounded professionals with the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and compassionate care of the highest quality. In 2024’s Provider Self-Assessment, 99% of organisation reported awareness of the SLEC and 87% are actively implementing and embedding the SLEC multi-professionally.