MOST mums expect to stop helping with school homework when their children pass their GCSEs.

But 48-year-old student nurse Katie Spanton is still giving daughter Ellie advice – almost five years after she finished secondary school.

Ellie, 21, followed her mum on to the adult nursing course at Oxford Brookes University’s Swindon campus.

The Calne girl spent years wanting to be a primary school teacher – until watching her mum enjoying the course persuaded Ellie to change her plans.

“It’s good,” said Ellie. “She helps me and we can practice on each other.”

Mum-of-four Katie said she was “really surprised” when her daughter said she wanted to go into nursing: “She was always going to be a primary school teacher. She had a place at Oxford Brookes on the primary teaching course.”

But Katie says her daughter – who she jokes is a “bit of a princess” – has turned into a great nurse: “She really loves it. She embraces it.”

Katie’s own journey to nursing has taken longer than her eldest daughter’s. Formerly a school teaching assistant, she started a job on the NHS 111 non-emergency phone line – working closely with doctors and nurses.

“That’s where I really got into the medical side of things,” she said. “Everything’s different and exciting. I thought, ‘I need to go into this.’”

She enrolled on an Oxford Brookes nursing course in Swindon. She said: “When my husband was going to be posted abroad with the RAF, I thought I was going to have to give up. But my lecturer convinced me to keep going: luckily my husband was posted nearby and, in the end, I didn’t miss any of my course.”

Katie will graduate in the summer and already has a job lined up with Wiltshire’s community nursing team.

Rachel Skittrall, Oxford Brookes’ programme lead for adult nursing in Swindon, said: “Nursing is an extremely rewarding profession with a wide range of opportunities following graduation, with pathways to specialisation as you progress through your nursing career.

“We have diverse student cohorts from school leavers to those who have chosen a change of career later in life. It’s never too late to choose to do something different and worthwhile.”

To find out more about studying nursing at Oxford Brookes, visit: www.brookes.ac.uk/nursing/courses.