School Nurse Service Brand Portree Hour Per Week

A school nurse is a registered nurse who looks after the health of children and young people across a group of schools, rather than in a hospital. The work mixes public health (immunisation programmes, height and weight checks, health education sessions) with individual support for pupils who have long-term conditions, mental health difficulties, safeguarding concerns or questions about sexual health. The title you've been given appears to be a garbled job advert heading - "Portree" is a town on the Isle of Skye, and "Hour Per Week" suggests a part-time post - so this guide describes the School Nurse role generally, as it exists across the UK, with notes on how rural and Scottish practice differs.

Starting salary: £29k–£32k
Live graduate jobs: Search all jobs
Main way in: The standard route
They usually ask for: NMC registration as a nurse is non-negotiable

Approximate graduate salary

Newly registered nurses in the NHS typically start at around £29,000–£32,000, with qualified specialist school nurse posts usually a band or two higher - roughly £37,000–£45,000. These are approximations and vary by band, employer, NHS pay award, location (London weighting adds more) and whether the post is in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Part-time posts, like the one this title seems to describe, are paid pro rata.

What you'd actually do

Running or supervising routine screening clinics in schools - vision and hearing checks, and the national child measurement work where children's height and weight are recorded
Delivering or organising school-based immunisation sessions, such as the flu nasal spray and the HPV and teenage booster vaccines, including consent-form chasing and dealing with anxious pupils
Holding drop-in sessions where pupils can come without an appointment to talk about anything from acne and periods to self-harm, bullying, vaping or contraception
Writing and updating individual healthcare plans for pupils with asthma, epilepsy, diabetes, allergies or continence needs, and training school staff on what to do in an emergency

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Attending multi-agency meetings about children where there are safeguarding or welfare concerns - with social workers, teachers, GPs and sometimes police - and writing reports for those meetings
Teaching classroom sessions on topics like puberty, healthy relationships, sleep, hygiene or substance use, often alongside teachers delivering the PSHE or health and wellbeing curriculum
Record-keeping and referrals: logging every contact on the electronic health record, and referring on to CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services), paediatrics, speech and language therapy or early help teams

How graduates get in

The standard route: a three-year BSc in Nursing, choosing the child field or the adult field, then registering with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Child nursing is the most natural fit, but adult, mental health and learning disability nurses all work as school nurses.
Almost all school nurse posts expect you to have worked as a registered nurse first - typically a year or more in paediatrics, community, A&E, practice nursing or mental health. Going straight from a nursing degree into a school nursing team is unusual, though some services take newly qualified staff into a staff nurse post within the team.
The formal specialist route is the Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (SCPHN) qualification in school nursing - a postgraduate diploma or MSc, usually a year full-time, which you normally apply for while sponsored by an employer who pays you and releases you to study. This is how you become a qualified school nurse rather than a school staff nurse.
Nursing apprenticeship routes exist - the nursing associate role and the registered nurse degree apprenticeship - which let you qualify while employed. These take longer but are paid, and are a genuine alternative to a full-time degree.

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Graduates from other subjects can take a two-year postgraduate pre-registration nursing course (MSc Nursing) to register, though places are limited and you'll usually need some care experience and a relevant science or health background.
In Scotland, the structure is slightly different - public health nursing education and the way school nursing sits within health boards and the Getting It Right For Every Child framework differ from England, so check the specific health board's requirements.

What employers ask for

NMC registration as a nurse is non-negotiable - you cannot work as a school nurse without it. The degree subject question doesn't really apply: it has to be an approved nursing programme.
Field of practice varies by employer. Some services advertise for child-branch nurses only; others accept any field. Mental health nursing backgrounds are increasingly welcome given how much of the caseload is emotional wellbeing.
Post-registration experience, usually stated as a minimum number of years in a relevant setting. Exactly how much varies a lot between services and between band levels.
An enhanced DBS check (or PVG scheme membership in Scotland) - you are working unsupervised with children.

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A full driving licence and access to a car is very commonly required, and essentially always in rural areas, because you cover several schools across a wide patch.
For the specialist school nurse title, the SCPHN qualification, or willingness to undertake it. Many job adverts say 'SCPHN or working towards'.

Skills that matter

Safeguarding judgement

You will hear disclosures about abuse, neglect, exploitation or self-harm, and you need to know what to escalate immediately, what to document and what to monitor - getting this wrong has serious consequences.

Talking to teenagers without sounding like a teacher

Pupils only use a drop-in if they trust the nurse; the ability to be non-judgemental about sex, drugs or body image is what makes the service work at all.

Confidentiality and consent reasoning

You constantly judge whether a young person can consent for themselves (Gillick competence) and when you must involve parents, which is a legal and ethical call you make alone, in the moment.

Autonomous working and prioritisation

You are often the only health professional in a building, managing a caseload across several schools with no one to hand a decision to.

Clinical skills in immunisation and screening

Vaccination sessions are high-volume and time-pressured, and you need to recognise and manage anaphylaxis and fainting confidently.

Negotiating with schools

Headteachers control the timetable and the room you get, so securing time for health education or screening means persuading people who have competing priorities.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Staff nurse within a school nursing or 0-19 public health team, building community experience and often supporting the qualified school nurses with clinics and immunisations.
Secondment or sponsorship onto the SCPHN school nursing programme, usually around a year, after which you hold the specialist qualification and your own caseload.
Qualified school nurse with responsibility for a patch of schools, supervising staff nurses and healthcare assistants and leading on particular topics such as immunisation or emotional health.
Team lead or clinical lead for a locality, managing staff, budgets and service performance - timelines for this vary enormously and depend on vacancies rather than years served.
Wider moves: service or commissioning roles in public health, safeguarding nurse specialist posts, health visiting (the SCPHN qualification transfers across with additional preparation), university lecturing, or advanced clinical practice with further study.

What people get wrong

“School nurses are based in one school, in a sick room, handing out plasters.”

Most are employed by an NHS trust, health board or a local authority public health service, not by a school, and cover a cluster of schools. Day-to-day first aid is almost always done by school staff, not the nurse.

“It's a quieter, lower-pressure alternative to hospital nursing.”

The clinical acuity is lower but the responsibility is more isolating - you make safeguarding and consent decisions on your own, with no crash team or senior colleague down the corridor, and you carry those cases for years.

“You spend the school holidays off.”

Most school nursing posts are year-round NHS contracts with standard annual leave. Holidays are typically used for catching up on caseload, training, planning and transition work for children moving school.

“Any nurse can simply apply and be called a school nurse.”

The protected specialist title generally requires the SCPHN qualification. Without it you can work in the team, but usually as a staff nurse at a lower band.

Where this varies

This role varies a great deal. In England, school nursing sits within local-authority-commissioned 0-19 public health services, so the service may be run by an NHS trust, a social enterprise or the council itself, and the exact offer differs between local areas. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, school nursing is organised through health boards or trusts and sits within different policy frameworks - the Scottish model has a defined set of priority areas for school nursing practice. Rural and island services (such as Skye, which the job title appears to reference) are different again: you may cover a very large geographical patch with long drives and small schools, work far more autonomously, and combine school nursing with other community nursing duties, whereas in a dense urban patch you might cover a handful of large secondaries and spend more time on immunisation campaigns and safeguarding meetings. Part-time and term-time-adjacent contracts are common, and the balance between public health programme delivery and individual casework shifts with whatever the commissioning service prioritises.

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General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.