Hundreds of the nation’s brightest students denied the chance to train as doctors despite leaving school with at least three A*s

17 comments

1. Do the schools make more £ by taking in foreign students?

2. It is a shame that we don’t allow people to get an education and then we try to fix a problem economy efficiency, which is based on lack on education..

3. I don’t see why 3 top grades guarantees any course.

   It says the answer, grade inflation.

4. Medical professionals are CAPPED.

   Have been for ages, so instead we import loads from other nations with far lower standards.

   Another dum-dum decision Britain makes.

5. Cheaper and easier to hire foreign doctors, than spending money on upgrading the whole doctor training process to allow more places.

   The UK only allows around 10k medical school places. This ensures that doctors are able to get onto the foundation programme once they finish medical school.

6. We just don’t need more medical school places, we need more speciality training posts.

   It’s just a cheap sound bite because the publics understanding of medical training is on par with “teachers sleep at school” level of understanding. It’s a self defeating vote winner.

7. Always been the same. Majority get onto medicine after 1, 2 or a full 3 years of undergrad

8. Should be British people first in all state occupations – redic that this is happening. Importing is such a cop out – especially when these people send money out of the country to family members – it doesn’t benefit the economy with long term thinking in mind.

   Part of the reason why so many people are pissed off is when things like this keep British people out of high skilled employment. Access and the ability to do so is needed. This is where money should be spent.

9. This is unfortunate but luckily we have dinghies full of doctors and nurses arriving on our shores daily

10. Eh, part of the issue here is that grades don’t count for enough when applying to med school. People get rejected with 3A* and accepted with 3As (or even slightly less than that sometimes if they don’t quite meet the offer).

    The standard AAA minimum has remained the same for a while. It was a little shaky back when I was applying, it’s ludicrous now after all the grade inflation post Covid. AAA is basically dead average in 3 subjects now, it’s not a sufficient bar to distinguish academically, and yes if you accept average students because they come across nicely in a 10 minute interview, you have to turn away a massively more qualified candidate in return.

    The AAA bar needs shifting.

11. Just for comparison: In Germany, 39 state run medical schools/unis offered 10k positions for studying human medicine in 2023/24. There were roughly 35k applications from Germany for these positions.

    There are roughly 6k open positions for doctors available right now in German hospitals, clinics, medical practices etc.

12. All these people happy to become medics with the current wages. Why would the government ever increase junior doctor pay. We don’t have a supply issue.

13. The university system needs to be heavily reformed. It pains me to admit this but a lot of universities will have to go out of business.

    Some universities fell drastically in quality during the last year including education with a lot of teachers leaving and new teachers coming almost in a monthly basis, and they don’t really hide the fact that all they want is international students, right now it feels like 50% of the university is masters degree international students from just a single country.

14. Spend 10 years training to cap out at what, 90k? After how many further years practicing?

15. That doesn’t sell the whole picture – just because you have the grades, it doesn’t mean that you would be a good doctor. You also need people skills (or the ability to be taught them) and the right temperament.

    Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, there’s no point having more medical school places if there aren’t enough people to provide clinical teaching, which is generally provided by other doctors in their non-existent free time for free. There also need to be more speciality training places so that we actually produce more GPs and hospital consultants.

16. I’ve said it for years invest more in the NHS and create a drugs arm sell to the rest of the world and focus a lot of education on future employees for the NHS at every level

    Instead of exporting arms around the world we could export health and still undercut big pharmaceuticals and provide drugs to our own NHS cheaply.

17. Sorry, we only hire doctors who can barely grasp the English language.