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

I doubt very much whether all 30,000 of those Law graduates end up practising as barristers or solicitors, though, whereas virtually 100% of medical graduates will work as doctors, for a time, at least.

NB
As per chart subject1213 on that link, less than 20,000 students started full time Medical courses that year, compared with over 30,000 starting Law.

I'd rather we had more doctors and less Lawyers TBH

Right.
Time to curtail the pontificating
www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1897&Itemid=239#pi
Table SP4
lists the percentage of State school entrants for each category of degree in 2012/13.

Medicine is low - only 71.4% of medical school students had attended State School
most other categories are in the high 80s, low 90s
but its a lot more than 50%

So it sounds like OP has rehashed the well debunked story about State 6th form colleges not getting kids into Russell Group etc
without realising that 6th forms specialise.

"Rabbit, a child who can only achieve b's and c's at A level is likely to struggle at medical school."

Kings offer an extended medical degree programme (6 years) to 50 students every year from non-selective state schools (they have a list of schools and FE colleges they take students from) and will take those with BBB, as long as they've been completed within 2 years.

Apparently this course has a good retention rate and turns out just as many good doctors as any other.

I think they should extend this programme to more medical schools, if it is successful and workable.

'There are so many reasons for the failures in these schools. Staffing is one. '

I am surprised at that.
I come from a family of teachers who always say that you find the best staff in the roughest schools and at independent/grammar schools (where it is easy to teach) the worst because you can get away with bad teaching because the kids by and large want to do well and will turn to other sources if need be.

wordfactory
As for numbers of privately educated and grammar schools at sixth form; More DC defect to them from non selective state than vice versa

I know that historically the percentage of 6th form pupils at fee paying schools was higher
when the school leaving age was 16
Is it still the case - now that the school leaving age has been effectively raised to 18?

AFAIK, children are not allowed to do work experience with doctors because of the confidential nature of the work. In our local trust, it makes no difference if it a city hospital or district hospital, if the doctor is posh(!!) or not.

"It disproportionately advantages city kids."

Children who live in cities have all sorts of advantages, full stop!

I think the work experience aspect is a huge one. I once sat in the Out of Hours in our local hospital (50 miles away) listening to a very posh doctor bemoaning the lack of work experience for his son to another. And yet, our pupils would have to travel 50 miles each way to that very hospital. So if a consultant's son can't get help - our kids are buggered. The main hospital is 120 miles away and do offer a week of organised experience (with accommodation) but you have to HAVE you grades for Medical School already, before they will admit you. This often means pupils having to take a year off - more expense for parents, particularly in the winter as all casual employment here is seasonal.

Our local GP can't take them as it is too local. Their only options are working with children (ie primary school helper) or with the elderly in the local care home. But, with only 8 beds and limited facilities for day care (when pupils are at school) this can't help much.

It is even become difficult to get into nursing / other medical careers for the same reasons. It disproportionately advantages city kids.

Rabbit, but there must be a group of children out there who have very caring personalities who would be good at these jobs. Why aren't we doing more to promote this caring for the elderly/disabled etc as an occupation? I suspect it's because we as parents don't want to encourage our children to do something that is low pay and not good conditions and also because schools just write off the low-achieving children as no-hopers.

Do be careful of this 'state' school statistic. I know that Oxford boast a very high percentage of 'state school' backgrounds - but in fact they are including institutions like the King Edward VII grammar schools in Birmingham (which are free to pupils) as state schools. Technically they aren't wrong - but as one parent told me her DD (a friend of DD1) is in a class where 75% of the kids went to private primaries which prepped them for the 11+.

I can very well believe this- I am in Birmingham and those children who now attend KES but did not attend private prep - I would imagine that very much like a lot of the boys that DS1 plays Rugby with- they received +++++ tuition in excess of £30 a session, at least twice a week.
Completely unobtainable for any child from a 'poor' family.

Has anybody actually SEEN or linked to this Research yet?

Just that I'm still unclear whether its
11-16 : in which case I utterly agree with WordFactory that schools need a kick up the arse on their facilitating subjects and careers advice.
or
16-18 : in which case its a non-issue because lots of colleges are not doing A levels, let alone Med school.

Funnily enough, we need a lot more people who are willing to care for our elderly, the mentally ill, the disabled, etc. We need so many of these people, we can't afford to pay them properly. Education is often used as a means to avoid being asked to do what needs to be done but doesn't win you any glory, any respect or any money.

But I was under the impression that state schools weren't churning out enough plumbers, or builders, or brick layers. And private schools aren't helping much, there.

Personally, I don't care if private schools churn out too many medical students because I don't necessarily believe that they do. We know that private schools tend to be selective so are more likely to have a cohort of children who get grades good enough for medical school when compared with state schools linked with areas do deprivation.
How about we reverse the question. Should we care that state schools churn out a higher ratio of plumbers (picked by me as an example occupation because mentioned earlier in the thread and also can be high earning)? I think I am more concerned that there are probably many children who do not have aspirations other than to leave school and possibly get a low paid job. We should have a better careers service and educational support for all children. Some children prefer academic work, other prefer hands on stuff. Instead of complaining that too many private school children become doctors, we should be asking what we can do to increase aspirations of the children who are not capable of being doctors. How can we give these children a trade or find them an occupation that suits them best?

I think you might find that private schools churn out a lot of everything including classicists, linguists, and engineers and indeed actors musicians and Olympic athletes. My guess is that if any group are over represented in medicine, it is Grammar school students.

You know, I reckon it would be a lot more fun to ask whether we should care that private schools are churning out far too many medical school hopefuls (it's not as if there's a shortage of applicants, after all), and is their career advice to students failing to spread the benefit of a top quality education to more sectors of the economy?

Rhetorician

I do take your point - and I wasn't terribly clear - I was meaning that current academics are more often than not children of academics themselves. I do agree that the landscape of academia is changing and that the quiet life of contemplation, teaching & research is more myth than reality. I also agree that there is a growing casualisation of staff - which I imagine is inspired by behaviour across the pond.

mumsneedwine

Do be careful of this 'state' school statistic. I know that Oxford boast a very high percentage of 'state school' backgrounds - but in fact they are including institutions like the King Edward VII grammar schools in Birmingham (which are free to pupils) as state schools. Technically they aren't wrong - but as one parent told me her DD (a friend of DD1) is in a class where 75% of the kids went to private primaries which prepped them for the 11+.

I suspect if you asked Oxford/ Cambridge to separate out grammar schools (private or free to pupils) - the percentage of ordinary state pupils would be radically lower.

I believe that nowadays absolutely nobody will get onto a medical degree course in the UK without A level Chemistry or a higher qualification in Chemistry, no matter how good their other qualifications are. Graduate Entry schemes are even more competitive to get onto than Direct Entry and because they are shorter (to keep costs down and to recognise the greater life experience of the students, I suppose) the students have to hit the ground running.

KCL medical school has what has always seemed to me to be a very good scheme for trying to widen access. A six-year medical degree programme open to students studying A levels/Access to Medicine at eligible non-selective state schools in London, Kent and Medway, and to participants of Realising Opportunities across England. Students study the core curriculum at a slower pace and with greater support for first three years. Programme content and assessments are the same as the standard five-year medical degree programme. The offer might be as low as BBB at A level. I'd be interested to know if the pass rates and career progression are as good at the end.

The onus should be on the whole of society, surely, to stop passing the buck? It's always someone else's fault - the parents, the lazy kids who can't look up the requirements of medical schools on the internet, the schools, the universities. Yet it's OUR society, not someone else's. It's the same with apprenticeships and tertiary education - nobody really wants to provide the apprenticeships, they just want the finished product, which is always inadequate due to someone else's fault. All anyone can say about it is, "I wouldn't start here," and "don't look at me."

Rabbit I carefully used the words "not proven". If a candidate has an A* in A level chemistry medical schools can be reasonably confident they can do it. If they don't, they may be able to do it or may not.

Some will then get in via access courses, but by and large Universities should be able to expect schools to advise/prepare good candidates properly. The onus should not be on medical schools to make up for shortfalls in secondary education.

Oops! Wrong thread!

*whom

Needmoresleep - as I said, my understanding was that the reporting indicated that medical schools have agreed they are not doing enough? I'm not stupid, you know, of course medical schools won't want to accept students who they think might struggle. However, given that some universities offer a 30-week course to students who didn't even do science A-levels in order to catch up (something my own father did many years ago when he decided, having done arts A-levels, to pursue medicine, being the first ever state educated person to go to the medical school in question, so obviously things have improved since then...), I don't think the "more difficult concepts in chemistry" are beyond people who did not study A-level chemistry.

Rabbit, a child who can only achieve b's and c's at A level is likely to struggle at medical school. There is a heck of a lot more to study when you're trying to be a doctor. It's not good enough to say we'll accept child x who has 3 b's. x has done really well to get these grades because he/she comes from a very disadvantaged background and hasn't been given good advice. This child is likely to go to medical school and be completely overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to learn. They may be an exceptionally compassionate child but if they can't pass the exams then they are not going to achieve a medical degree.
I'm interested in the fact that people seem to think that there is an issue when children of doctors go onto be doctors. Why is this any different from a plumbers son going onto be a plumber, or a shopkeeper employing their child? Any child growing up with a parent who works will have an advantage in understanding how that occupation works.