Should we care that 50% of state schools didn't produce any medicine applicants in 3 years?

I just don't understand the obsession with voluntary work
Simple
barriers to entry
the classic way that professions maintain their elitism

and in the case that the OP implied
remembering that the premise of the thread is in fact false, but the gist is right

In the stats I linked above, private school kids are four times as likely to get into medical school as they should by raw numbers but allowing for selection its only about double
and the non exam factors are the barrier to entry

same as media and fashion and law and politics jobs have all become the preserve of those who can afford unpaid internships

Quite a few 16-year olds do have siblings to collect from school, make meals for and look after until parents come home. Still, they're not the sort likely to be given the time to get their schoolwork and revision done to the level required to get top grades, let alone find further unpaid work to do outside the home. One way or the other, people who have got even close to the grades required for medical school are going to have had a lot of support, even if not financial, or at least, not had too heavy a burden of family responsibility put on their shoulders.

what like the clanger on CRB ?????????

or rural unemployment?

or median wages?

Agent
if you had the foggiest what you were talking about you would know that it is not possible to get CRB'd

I gave a postcode : find the location within £15 per week of there.

?? What has the public transport system in London got to do with students from deprived areas outside of London?!

Agent
In much of the country there are many, many applicants for such care assistant jobs, from people who will not piss off when term starts.

I dropped DD off at a party tonight where the nearest public transport route is 5 miles along unlit country lanes : a tad tricky for kids wanting to get anywhere independently
and that is Hampshire

If your parents are farm labourers its chuffing difficult to get to any job, let alone a short term experience one

Play with this postcode picked at random BS27 3SD : get yourself to the hospital by public tranpsort for work experience

Veterinary experience is much harder to acquire for the non rural, poorer student with no contacts. The high number of A GCSE required is the same as for medicine. Those high numbers of A are the real barriers for DCs from certain state schools.

atoughyear
I hope so.
I've tried to make opportunities available but not push her in any way.
DS will be harder work equally bright but three times as lazy
BUT
My kids have always known that DH visits every possible type of school so his views on their options are the really important ones - and he went to Comps right through

She sounds incredibly switched in Talkin.

marni
the colleges have hardship funds : and have access to pupil premium - work experience does not

atoughyear
DD is in AS year. She loved working at the vet
but
decided against doing it as a degree for lots of reasons

• the animals were fine, but the owners drover her potty which was the reason she had ruled out medicine
• its a 5 year course where you are expected to work for free in every single holiday - no chance to be a dissolute student like her parents
• at the end you are a vet and nothing else
• unlucky vets end up working in abbatoirs

Talkin I am afraid you are talking without any real knowledge of how suitable experience for prospective medical students is judged according to their circumstances. No keen student would be penalised for not being able to afford to travel to hospital or wherever or having the right contacts or whatever you would like to imagine. The whole point of selection is to make sure that students are making contact and showing willingness to engage in areas of need.

What's your dd's experience of veterinary science Talkin? Is your dd having trouble getting onto a course and if so why?

Thank you mimsy and talkin.

The arrogance of those posters wealthy enough to not realise that £17 a week makes a difference to many families is breathtaking

Make your mind up Talkin, earlier in the week you were telling us that
DD is at 6th form college 15 miles from here : the annual bus pass is £667 that is affordable

Going back to the OP, I think what this demonstrates once again is that Secondary school provision across the country is unacceptably patchy. The fact that many Mumsnetters are happy with the schools their DC attend will be of no comfort to a parent who can only access a school or schools that is unsatisfactory or in special measures. Or failing to produce a single applicant for medicine if that is where their DC's ambitions lie.

Needmoresleep
helping an elderly neighbour with dementia
How on earth would that be verified / proved? - when DD did her Vet work experience, the letter afterwards was an essential part.

To do nothing simply because you are "poor" sounds reasonably feeble to me
Kids will do what they can, but the potential resources and home support networks just are not there.
When Saturday and evening jobs are an essential part of the family income, and Child Benefit stops when the A Level exams do,
let alone if you live outside London where stuff is not walking distance ....

the over representation of those from London and the well heeled
in the best career opportunities sadly makes sense

Talkin' that is very unfair.

DD has repeatedly been told that it is not how much voluntary work you do, but what you get out of it. I cannot see why "poverty" should prevent someone find the time to engage with the elderly, disabled or young within their community. At the moment DD volunteers once a week. London, and only about a mile away, so she walks. However poverty should not be a barrier to helping an elderly neighbour with dementia or a mother with a disabled child or something similar.

Medical schools are open to candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. To find something creative if there were barriers to more usual voluntary work ought to be fine. To do nothing simply because you are "poor" sounds reasonably feeble to me.

DD can't get a placement with our local Health Trust because she does not go to a school within the borough. The fact that she can see her school from her bedroom window and that very few in our part of the borough attend local schools, is neither here nor there. She wont have any hospital experience, but hey ho. Other than the fact that she can walk so does not need fare money I can't see how she is particularly advantaged. The organisation she volunteers for is crying out for more help.

Veterinary science, which your daughter wanted to do, sounds very different. There I think they want oodles of experience with different kinds of animals.

Sorry Dapple I knew that Aggghast would know. Yes, Pompey is Portsmouth

Mimsy
Agreed, but as there are certain strategically important professions, the fact that Med Students qualify with well over £100,000 of student loans - thus suppressing their earnings by 9% for several years
is surely part of the reason that the NHS would collapse if we could not import as many overseas medical staff as we do.

A doctor from a Scottish University with no fees will have 9% higher wages than his English trained colleague - doing the same job in the same hospital ....

PS
The Work experience / Internship issue is absolutely critical
because for Admissions staff, the extra information is one of the ways to differentiate between the serried ranks of A* grade students.

For those who cannot afford the spare time to go and do unpaid stuff, or whose parents cannot afford to pay extra travel costs, the rug has been pulled before they get their grades.

The arrogance of those posters wealthy enough to not realise that £17 a week in bus fares makes a difference to many families
is breathtaking.

Pompey = nickname for Portsmouth, I think.

Talkin - what's a Pompey private school?

I think there's a fixed number of medical school places each year, so you can rather more medical students than lawyers all you like, but they can squeeze more people into law degrees.

Sleepytea - why aren't we doing more to promote caring as a profession? Because aggression and competitiveness are prised over what used to be considered feminine virtues? Because society still hasn't got used to the idea that we can't take advantage of those doing the work and expect them to do it for nothing, now that women refuse to take that role on automatically as a societal demand and expectation? Because it is so incredibly badly paid that it is hard to support a family on the money earned? Because society doesn't understand that the level of caring and compassion required to do that sort of work for strangers day in, day out (or even your own family) is more rare than we think, so we don't value it enough? Because people don't get paid what they are worth if there is so much need for the service that employers have to recruit those who don't care and can't find work anywhere else, too? Because our society doles out respect to those with the wealth and power, neither of which you get from putting others before yourself?