NE Herts MP Oliver Heald has asked the Education Minister for Universities Michelle Donelan MP for more university places for medical students. There is a national shortage of doctors rising to 1 in 10 vacancies unfilled in mental health.
The Universities Minister has replied confirming an extra 20,000 applications for medical places and that the limits on medical students numbers and funding have been increased. See below.
Commenting Oliver said:
“I am glad Ministers have responded to my call for more medical places at universities. We need to increase numbers in the pipeline to become doctors and I hope more can be encouraged into shortage areas such as General Practice and mental health. Despite the hard work of local doctors, there is a need for increased doctor numbers in our area and to tackle issues with recruitment and retention.
Question:
What steps his Department is taking to increase the number of places on medical courses available to undergraduates. (903336)
Tabled on: 06 September 2021
Answer:
Michelle Donelan:
The government is committed to ensuring that the number and distribution of medical school places are in line with England’s workforce requirements and continues to monitor the effectiveness of current arrangements.
Applications for medicine and dentistry made by the June deadline increased by over 20,000 this year compared to last year for all domiciles. We have increased the medical and dentistry caps so that providers can take on more students and we have run a brokerage scheme to help move over 80 students at oversubscribed providers into unfilled places.
In addition, we are providing up to £10m in grant funding for providers to take on more students in high-cost subjects, such as medicine, dentistry, nursing and other lab-based courses.
The answer was submitted on 06 Sep 2021 at 16:28.