The Nursing and Midwifery Council UK in order to relieve financial burden on foreign educated nurses seeking places in her register last month reduced the cost of her exams with effect from April 1st, 2019. However, the goal of this goodwill looks defeated as applicants from Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon still pay double or in most cases triple of these fees.

Attempts by applicants from the aforementioned countries to pay for the Computer Based Test (CBT) on Pearson Vue website always meet brick walls as they are greeted with the message “ Card payment is not available for the test Chosen, Kindly contact your test centre for payment assistance”

It seems odd that Pearson Vue accepts credit and debit card payment from the aforementioned countries during registration for NCLEX-RN and other exams it conducts  but direct applicants for UK NMC CBT to test centres for payment. This has given room for test centres to almost double or in most cases triple the registration fees from applicants. For instance some Test Centres in Lagos Nigeria charge applicants £139 as against £90 approved by NMC. Applicants who wish to re-schedule the exam are charged £11 against free rescheduling policy on Pearson Vue website. It should be noted however that applicants from these countries are able to make the £140 NMC application fees payment effortlessly on NMC website with their debit and credit cards.

Aside the above problem associated with accepting payments from Test Centres only, Test Centres now see themselves as gods and wield unnecessary power.  Some Centres in Lagos for instance are famous for always cancelling scheduled exam for any applicant that tried to move their test away to another centre for any reason whatsoever. Applicants are then refunded £85 as against the £139 collected from them for initial registration. Applicants from other test centres from Ibadan and  Abuja Nigeria, Yaounde in Cameroon and Accra Ghana have near similar experience

These excess charges and behaviors from test centres affect the number of applicants sitting for CBT in those countries as it makes the UK Nurse registration more expensive than it should be. We therefore pray that NMC UK should:

1.     Mandate Pearson Vue to start accepting credit and debit card payments from Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon like it does for its other Exams

2.    Stop test centres from Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon from registering and paying on behalf of applicants as it only breed extortion.

3.     Stop test centres from charging applicants different unapproved fees

4.     Approve more test centres to administer CBT Exam in order to reduce the stress of traveling long distance for applicants.

Acting on these prayers will in no doubt dramatically increase the number of applicants sitting for CBT Exams and coming to UK which will ease the shortage of Nurses currently being experienced