A UNIVERSITY department responsible for training staff for local hospitals says student nurse numbers will not be hit by a big drop in NHS funding.

Oxford Brookes School of Health and Social Care, which has trained hundreds of nurses, midwives and occupational therapists since being created in 1997, is completing a major cost-cutting exercise.

The school, one of the largest at the university, will have £1.2m less to spend a year by 2008. And it has confirmed that 17 jobs, mainly in teaching, are to go as a result of a major fall in income.

The school, based in the spacious grounds of the former Milham Ford School in Marston Road, said its problems resulted from national changes in NHS payments to train nurses and health professionals.

But the dean of the school, June Girvin, pledged the cutbacks would not affect the numbers of nurses and health workers trained, or the standard of teaching at the school.

She said the school had been hit by the introduction of a national benchmark, to ensure a standard national payment to teach health professionals. Previously, payments were negotiated locally and the school received more than the national average.

The dean said the drop in funding was in no way connected to the current financial problems facing the NHS. She said the school hoped to avoid compulsory redundancies and paid tribute to the school's staff for working to minimise the impact of the cuts on students.

In a statement, the school said: "By September this year, we will have made the necessary reductions in costs, which include reductions in the number of staff.

"It is to the credit of the school's management that these plans have been put in place without making compulsory redundancies.

"Although the reduction in funding to train nurses remains disappointing, we have worked closely with the Thames Valley Strategic Health Authority and our local NHS partners.

"We will be receiving in the region of £800,000 less over a period of three years for our nursing, midwifery, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students.

"There will be no impact on the students' learning experience and the school has carefully considered ways of working differently to try to minimise the impact on staff workload."

Brookes created its School of Health and Social Care eight years ago, following a merger of the Oxford Radcliffe School of Nursing, formed in the 1920s, and the pioneering School of Occupational Therapy.

At present, the school trains 141 adult nurses, 22 children's nurses, 25 mental health nurses, 21 learning disability nurses, 14 midwives, 48 physiotherapists and 27 occupational therapists a year.

The school recently achieved significant fundraising success raising £4m towards its new state-of-the-art facilities in Marston Road, to create what is now one of the country's premier healthcare training schools.