Harsh opinion - is it fair to give work experience to students who in reality haven't the academic ability to enter the profession e.g. medcine?

[mids2019]

I work in a large NHSq trust and we are continually being asked by our widening participation team to take on work experience students for a range of medical careers including clinical science and medicine.
A lot of the children unfortunately are forecast 3/4/5s at GCSE yet schools and the widening participation team keep saying we should be giving work experience to these children who in reality won't be qualified for some professiions out of what I see is a misguided sense of fairness.

The medics push back at this saying they simply have no time and time would be wasted enthusing a child about a profession they would be unlikely to be able to do.

The medics are quite happy to take students from a locally high performing grammar school as a matter of course unofficially (and often due to parental connections)

The thing with widening participation though is (I’m guessing) it’s coming too late - if the children are already deep into GCSEs, as many do work experience in y10 or 12 (more common now as many workplaces refuse to take anyone under 16).

to do WP properly it needs to start imo at primary or certainly ks3. Someone entering y10 with a prediction of a 3 is going to struggle to pull it up enough in that time.
Someone struggling at y7 could, by building aspiration and then supporting development of the skills that help them to learn.

If you’re from a poor or deprived background it’s incredibly difficult to have any social mobility, surely the work experience is about opening up horizons. They won’t be operating on you next week. But a career in the nhs has more pathways than a surgeon,

In a world of limited resources, yes, it is important to allocate resources (work experience opportunities) wisely. Children need to be aware that GCSE grades are an important criterion for accessing work experience schemes.

One issue is that for medicine for instance there are loads of interested kids but simply not enough time for medics to spend mentoring or organising the experience. The medic body have taken an unwritten policy of taking kids that might make it as doctors.

It's not only about ambition and parental input though. Quite a lot of students simply aren't academically bright enough to be able to become doctors, however hard they work or however supportive their parents are.

My son isn't in grammar school, but I know that several children left 6th Form at his school last year, and were accepted in medical school. So it's not just children from grammar schools who are capable! Plenty of children from non-grammar schools are capable! So it's very short sighted to concentrate on grammar schools.

And that unwritten policy is decided by being at the grammar school and/ or being the child of one of your mates…I find that abhorrent.

They just need to make the work experience be a more generic experience which is open to all
and share it out amongst lots of staff so that medics only have them for a day or something and the rest they can shadow other stuff.

I agree but please don't write off pupils who are on track with grades from.the comprehensive schools too.

I'm interested in this NHS trust that takes children under 17 for medical work experience because I, after years of trying to help students from a range of backgrounds get NHS experience, have never come across one. NHS work experience is highly restricted and like hen's teeth. Indeed the only students I know who have ever got anything have 'connections'.

My DD did "Widening Participation" visits in Yr7-9... (I was surprised at her inclusion but apparently she ticks the right boxes...)

As a recently retired teacher of 31 years i can assure you there will candidates from local comprehensive who fit the criteria. You need a transparent fair system of application not nepotism

yes state school children, please stick to work experience in shops or similar, don’t waste our precious intellectual energy! Remember you are beneath us and always will be. After all, your mummy and daddy don’t have friends among us, and being thick you don’t deserve to see if you would enjoy a job in a medical field.

ffs

There are plenty of careers in healthcare that don't require top grades. So I suppose my question would be, if a child is considering or is more suited to a lower entry career e.g. nursing, is there a work experience pathway? Or are they all being funnelled through the medicine one because there are no other options?

My proposed solution would be a work experience programme that covers a wide range of NHS careers and doesn't depend so heavily on doctors to administer it. It would be beneficial for potential medics to learn about the roles of nurses, phlebotomists, health care assistants and gain experience of those roles too and I doubt they would be disadvantaged by this when applying to the degree - probably the opposite. And this way it is useful and accessible to everyone.

I don't think you could have WE as a primary child but what you could do is invite people in to talk about their job or their life.

I say life because one of my grandmothers went into a primary school to tell the children what her experience at primary was.

At one primary I attended a lady would come in with lots of equipment her daughter used. Her daughter was blind so we got to write our names in Braille and put Braille labels on tins, throw a ball with bells in it.

All good fun and a learning experience.

I have seen trips taking pupils to Oxford university at school. The participants are pupils who probably would not even be considering university or be eligible I suppose it is to enthuse them, perhaps get them to even have it on their radar? When I was a pupil id have probably been in this category as no one in my circles gad been in higher education.

Yes but they're many kids who don't go to grammar school who will have the required grades and higher. So you are actively making it much harder for kids who go to state schools, mote likely to be from a low socio-economic background to get experience which is unfair. Because just by going to a grammar school you are deciding those kids, work harder and are smarter. Just check their GCSE grades and have a minimum requirement. Don't discriminate against kids who likely have no family connections and go to state school.

Hmm bit different but similar, I arranged work experience for my DD with a gp with a friend's practice. She was predicted and achieved the grades but decided she definitely didn't want to be a doctor based on what she saw, which I think is a valid outcome of work experience, but the friend seemed a bit off about it.
I don't really understand cases whete employers are being told predicted grades and then still accept the placement

That seems to sum up the problem. A candidate who was academically qualified and supported by a motivated family couldn’t get into a course because the courses were either fully booked with unsuitable people, or the medics were just fed up with wasting their time on unsuitable people. Another victory for DEI.

My DD did similar, she spent the week with lots of different staff from porters to plaster room to amputee clinic!

She's been a Diagnostic Radiographer since 2018 now. I don't think she went into Xray at all because of the radiation requirements, but she saw enough at the hospital to realise it wasn't just doctors and nurses.

Agree with this. Medicine was a very popular choice among my peer group at my state comprehensive, and I think most of those who applied got in. I even know a few people from there who went to Oxbridge.

My local hospital has volunteering opportunities for 16-19 year olds. It’s not clinical work experience but it is being in a hospital.

https://volunteering.cuh.org.uk/volunteering-opportunities-2/programme-for-young-people-16-19/

This is also why there should not be grammar schools. Labelling kids at a young age as non academic and fostering lack of social mobility. I would not live in a grammar school area.

The same is true of some students attaining higher grades at GCSE because they have been tutored to ensure they achieve those grades. They won’t all be bright enough to attain the A level grades needed for medicine.

I’m a lawyer, and have work experience students occasionally. Firstly, we have an application form to make sure they’re actually vaguely interested and engaged, but I agree to ensure they actually get an experience they can something out of it, it does take a fair amount of time up! (Although I ended up getting a lot of work out of the parents of one, so it’s not all bad!).

But because of the time and the planning, we won’t just offer it out to anyone who asks, they do need to demonstrate why they’re interested and what they hope to get out of it.

I suppose the aim is to inspire underachieving kids to strive for higher grades