Behind the number
In June 2026, England had 1,862 full-time equivalent school nurses. In 2010, it had 3,026.
It is easy to read a figure like that and move on. But every one of those 1,862 is a person with a caseload, a diary that is already full and a list of children they are worried about. Behind the statistic are nurses who stay late to finish paperwork, who drive between schools at lunchtime, and who still make time to sit with the child who needs them most.
This blog is about those people, and about what we can do to protect the part of their job that only they can do.
What the King’s Fund found
This month the King’s Fund published its report, What does the health and care system look like for children in England? Its message is stark. It describes school and public health nurses as having been “hollowed out” from England’s health services.
The figures behind that phrase:
- The number of full-time equivalent school nurses fell by 38% between January 2010 and June 2026.
- Health visitor numbers fell by 46% over 11 years.
- Funding for children’s services was cut by 16% between 2016/17 and 2025/26.
The report warns that a generation of children could face preventable epilepsy, asthma and mental health conditions as a result. Nursing Times described it as children’s health reaching “crisis point”.
None of this will surprise anyone working in school nursing. They have been living it for years.
What this feels like in screening season
Autumn is the busiest time of year for school nursing teams. Reception children need their vision and hearing checks. The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) is under way, and in 2024/25 it measured more than 1.1 million children with 94.1% participation. That level of coverage doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because nurses make it happen.
Think about what sits around each of those checks. Consent forms have to be chased. School visits have to be booked around assemblies and trips. Results need recording, letters need sending to parents and referrals need following up. Then the data has to be checked and submitted.
Much of that work is necessary. Very little of it needs a registered nurse to do it by hand. Every hour spent re-typing results or chasing a missing form is an hour that isn’t spent with a child who is struggling with their weight, their hearing or their mental health.
Technology should give time back, not take the job
Let’s be clear about one thing. Software cannot replace a school nurse. It can’t notice that a quiet child seems withdrawn, reassure an anxious parent or build trust with a teenager who has nobody else to talk to. That is the heart of the job, and it is human work.
What good technology can do is clear the space around that work. That means:
- Digital consent, so forms come back faster and nobody spends days chasing paper.
- Recording results once, at the point of screening, rather than writing them down and typing them up later.
- Sending results letters to parents automatically, in clear and sensitive language.
- Flagging referrals so that no child slips through the gap.
- Preparing NCMP data for submission without hours of manual checking.
This is why we built SchoolScreener. It is built for school nursing teams, around the way they work, to take the admin off their plate. The aim is simple: more of each nurse’s day spent with children, and less spent with spreadsheets.
Five questions worth asking this term
Whether you lead a school nursing team or commission the service, these questions can help you find where time is being lost:
- How many hours a week does your team spend chasing consent?
- How many times is each screening result written down or typed in before it reaches the record?
- How long does it take for parents to receive their child’s results?
- Can you see, at a glance, which referrals are still waiting for follow-up?
- How much of your team’s time goes on preparing NCMP data for submission?
If the answers make you wince, you are not alone. They are also the clearest places to win back time for children.
Protecting the time that matters
The workforce gap won’t close overnight. It needs proper investment, more training places and long-term funding for public health, and we will keep adding our voice to those calls.
In the meantime, the 1,862 school nurses we do have deserve every minute of their day to count. Our part is to make sure the paperwork never comes before the child.
If you’d like to talk about how SchoolScreener could support your team this screening season, get in touch.