Keralite senior carer in UK for 13 years becomes registered nurse without English test requirements

By A Staff Reporter (www.ukmalayalee.com Exclusive)

LONDON March 28: Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC)’s new changes to the English language requirements came into effect on 8 February 2023. This began to help those senior carers who have been working in the UK for several years and wasnt able to get registered as nurses due to the stringent English language test requirements to get them registered as nurses.

Here we have a story of a Juby Reji from Stoke On Trent who has been working for thirteen years in the UK as senior carer in Stoke on Trent got registered as a nurse with the help of the new NMC language requirements. She probably is the first senior carer to have received the PIN number through the renewed English language qualifications.

From 8 February 2023, the NMC extended the period for combining test scores from six to twelve months and updated the minimum scores when test combining.

Juby Reji was not able to meet the IELTS and OET score as she kept missing the target. Her thirteen years of experience wasn’t counted towards her receiving the PIN number. But finally her dream has come true and she has secured the job as nurse at the same hospital she was working last as senior carer.

Juby is from Kanjirappally and her husband Reji Philip is from Kattapana. The couple has two kids are Annteresa Reji and Anitta Reji. They are settled in Stoke on Trent.

Speaking to this website www.ukmalayalee.com, Juby said: “In 2018, I completed a 2 year Foundation course in Nursing from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. After the graduation in 2018 I submitted my first application to the NMC. Following a final assessment, in 2019, my case officer gave me a decision that “you have not met the NMC’s language criteria, and therefore not to be completing OET or IELTS”.

“I kept sending emails to NMC and asked them to explain “why I wasn’t successfull as I also had completed 2 years university course like other nursing associate students?”.

“I almost gave up my dream to become a Registered Nurse in the UK. Meanwhile, in 2020 April, I came to know a girl who got NMC registration without IELTS or OET (she got PIN after the submission of 2 year Foundation of Nursing and a letter from her line manager).

“I had a conversation with her and following it I began pursuing my application with NMC but I received the same reply that I have to get the required score for OET and IELTS.

“As my first NMC application got nearly expired, I started another application and completed OSCE and CBT. After that, I started to write OET, but I was just missing 0.5 score in reading.

“At the same time, I asked my line manager to provide evidence of my English language proficiency which she gave me and I provided evidence from doctors and patients. Finally, NMC allowed me to appeal their decision on 6th February 2023.

“Meanwhile, at the same time the new NMC English language test requirements were being implemented. As a result, without appeal I received the NMC registration few days before the new rule in effect (with SIFE). I am also proud to say that my husband also got NMC registration through SIFE in March 2023.

“I would thank Late Mr Peter Mountford, Agimol Pradeep and Dilla Davis who helped me and my husband throughout the whole process by giving me the strength to keep the fight to obtain the PIN number to become a registered nurses in the UK. Finally after thirteen years I received it and today I am a nurse within NHS.

The NMC has begun accepting supporting information from employers as supplementary evidence of English language proficiency. For now, this applies to people who trained in English in a country where English is not a majority spoken language and who have been working for at least one year in an unregulated role in a health and social care setting in the UK.

The NMC will also ask for evidence that their training and assessment was in English.

Accepting Employer Evidence was implemented on 8/2/23. This was done through SIFE, an online individualised form sent to applciant’s line manager directly by the NMC

Dr Agimol Pradeep, liver transplant coordinator at King’s College Hospital, and Dr Dilla Davis, nursing lecturer at the University of Salford, were some of the people who have been calling for changes to the NMC’s English language requirements.

They have been campaigning for more than two years on behalf of thousands of India-trained nurses who have been unable to pass the language test and achieve registration, despite living and working as healthcare assistants in the UK.