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)

No child should be refused if there is a space.

They might turn their studies around after being inspired.

Most people can be whatever they want to be if they’re given the right opportunities and support.

Of course some people are naturally better at some things than others but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to learn other things.

If someone has the determination and drive to really want to do something, then given the right opportunities, they will become better in that area than someone who is just naturally good at it and has less drive.

There is a reason why there are foundation years in medicine now because they realise that just because your grades are lower, doesn’t mean you won’t make an incredible doctor.

Year 10 work experience aren’t allowed to do most patient stuff so they do an overview of portering, medical electronics, corporate, plaster room. Very rarely interact with doctors until older work exp which is career specific so I’m calling bs on this. The most year 10s get is an overview of nhs roles. The doctors would also have no clue what dc predictions were for GCSEs. I work in an nhs corporate role and will only accept work experience to our team if they have an interest. The work experience coordinator asks if we have capacity and I can say yes or no.

No but there is a wider point that the PP is making in a tongue in cheek way.

I am in a professional job that requires professional qualifications. The qualification had harder exams than my degree. We used to have quite high academic criteria for candidates and used to get great graduates coming into the business. Now, due to social mobility, we got rid of all academic requirements and experiential questions (interview questions are now “what would you do” in this scenario, not give me an example of when).

The quality of candidates we recruit had taken a nose dive. We used to have maybe one candidate in a cohort fail one exam, now we have multiple candidates failing multiple exams regularly. There also seems to have been a drop in work ethic.

I am from a low socioeconomic background. Think hiding in the back of the house from the bailiffs as a child, eating plain pasta as a meal. I still managed to be the first in my family to go to uni with 5 As at A Level. I understand that less privileged children perform less well at school, but there is also a point where it is too late. If you’ve not been able to learn at school for 10+ years to get good GCSE results, I’m not sure that you’re going to have an epiphany in your early adulthood and become a top performing academic in the way this is required for medicine and other professional roles.

But then there are other roles in healthcare that aren’t doctors. I know plenty of nurses and paramedics that barely scraped through GCSEs, and as others have mentioned in admin or wider roles. Really the work experience should match the kids to broader roles and not have them shadow a doctor where they’re unlikely to ever become one

Indeed. The NHS is one of the biggest employers in the world but the only work experience they can possibly offer Y10s is extremely rare and highly sought after medical work experience?

As someone who works in widening participation, I despair.

The problem is not widening participation, the problem is that at your hospital the team sounds shit and there isn’t institutional buy in as you have doctors doing whatever the fuck they want.

What would be reasonable here is to have a work experience programme developed which exposes students to multiple different NHS careers and pathways with all sorts of different entry requirements - just because a student is predicted passes and a career as a doctor might not be a good fit for them, doesn’t mean they won’t benefit from the knowledge of what a doctor does when they go for an interview for a orthoptics apprenticeship. And indeed, something like that would be much more aligned with HEEs push to promote shortage subjects!

And, as other posters have said, sometimes it is work experience that motivates students to get higher grades. Or, the grades they can achieve at school are limited not by their ability but by their personal circumstances. Even in the example of wanting to do medicine with lower grades, okay they might not do it the traditional way, but could do work experience, an access course or foundation programme and then go on to be a wonderful doctor.

That work experience programme would then have clear entry criteria, which prioritises WP students on a fair and transparent metric.

We found this and it's very unfair. Luckily unis are doing participation programmes for medicibe/ dentistry to get round this lack of opportunity. My dd will definitely be helpful on the work experience front because she wasn't a private/grammar school candidate and got experience by the skin of her teeth.

Did she think outside the box a bit and try establishments such as nursing homes? Volunteering at a local hospice? Because afaik medical schools (including the one I teach at) would count such experience. We wouldn’t penalise someone who couldn’t get actual hospital experience. And I’d be amazed if she couldn’t get anything in a hospice or nursing home.

Yes, let's just offer work experience to the privately educated kids on grade 9/A* 🙄. Meanwhile, the rich kids all get to do work experience anyway with their parents and parents friends in GP surgeries, top law firms, shadow a CEO etc. It's all about who you know. I see this everyday in my job.
Widening participation is important, even if they won't get the grades for medicine, the experience is still useful for other jobs including related areas like nursing, physio, midwifery. It's about raising aspirations and giving everyone regardless of background the same opportunities. And it might motivate some of those on lower grades to aim higher if they decide as a result they do want to be a doctor. I can't see any negatives to widening participation, but lots of positives.

This sounds sensible and reasonable.

This is really wrong. All it takes is a one off 5 min conversation with the widening participation scheme where the importance of suitable candidates is impressed upon them.

They cascade that information down to the local schools and ime teachers will say to students that maybe other work experience within the medical field would be more suited to them.

you don’t need to be engaging with them on a case by case basis so I’m not sure why there is time wasting

In the field of mental health, we encounter many individuals who face multiple, overlapping disadvantages poverty, unstable housing, trauma, and a lack of access to opportunity. A common theme among those we support is the absence of positive role models and a belief that certain career paths or experiences were simply not for people like them.

Some people have shared they never considered working at all, because they never knew anyone who did. This isn’t a failure of ambition it’s the result of social isolation and limited exposure to what’s possible.

There are things we may take for granted a trip to the beach, a visit to a museum, seeing someone in a professional uniform which, for others, are first-time experiences that ignite imagination, possibility and self-belief. I have witnessed people light up when exposed to these moments. Their excitement is palpable, and it often opens their horizons in unexpected ways.

That’s why work experience should be seen not only as a step toward a profession, but as a moment of possibility. It should be about broadening young people’s understanding of the world and showing them that they belong in places they may have never imagined. Especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, this exposure can be transformational. The NHS is big organisation with a variety of career paths and opportunities. The NHS has people from all walks of life including people who failed at school and have gone on to have career success.

What if the children have circumstances which is affecting/restricting their grade, but actually have the academic potential ?

they are more than likely aware the profession is out of reach with their current grades, but in the future they may resit and this work experience could give them the motivation to do so?

I appreciate the constraints on the medical team providing the work experience but I wouldn’t write someone off due to their current grades. Hard work and determination beats natural talent.

This. Beautifully put.

I know this isn’t right. I know two friends kids who are currently studying medicine where their experience was actually working in a care home and not in anyway shadowing doctors. One of them actually had to omit some work experience with a neurologist from the UCAS application second time round because one of the universities said they could only have got that work experience through nepotism. Your friend’s daughter potentially needs to try more.

and probably costly. So who funds this?

What she couldn’t even get care home experience? (I don’t believe any Uk wouldn’t be satisfied with that). That’s very surprising. Or did she only want hospital work - so she limited herself?

Absolutely this.

As someone who has family members in various medical roles of all levels, I would find it easy to arrange any amount of medicine work experience with no effort at all. I also have a number of friends in different medical roles.
If I put on my FB, for example, that we were looking for work experience for medicine, I'd probably get discussions from:

GP
Anaesthetist
Paed consultant
Nurse
School nurse
Pharmacist
ENT
Obs and Gynae
OT
Prosthetics
Physiotherapist
Research scientist (medical)
MRI specialist

And that's off the top of my head without thinking hard.

It could be done with no effort at all from my dc and very little from me - and might help them decide if medicine is/isn't from them, but it doesn't show anything other than we have lots of medical connections.

A student who has gone out on their own bat and not managed any of the above but has put in huge amounts of effort and eventually gone for the only near thing they can get eg in a nursing home, deserves far more recognition.

I'm not in favour of work experience being considered high on applications for this reason. I can see how unfair it is.

And this statement is absolutely showing exactly the issue:
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)

I wonder whether the "low performing 3s and 4s" are actually that low or whether it's assumption because they're not at the local high-performing grammar school.

What a depressing post. Let’s just keep the class system alive and well and make sure people know their place.

It reminds me of the careers advice at my working class comprehensive where girls were ‘advised’ about shop work and hairdressing and boys were directed to the local factories.

Yeah…because we all know that the worth and talent of people is perfectly reflected in gcse grades and whether or not their parents orchestrated a place at a grammar school. 🙄

The time consuming aspect is surely the same regardless who the student is? I thought it was to introduce students into a workplace situation, rather than effectively provide pre-training for potential medics. I'd imagine the majority of people don't work in the field they did year 10 work experience, mainly because so few places offer it. I can think of at least 5 people who did work experience in the very small workplace I work at, it was time consuming to teach/supervise them....and none have gone into that industry

Yep, ridiculous. Political correctness and leftism written all over it. Stick back to time tested methods and don't bend backwards

No some students do see the work of our medic staff group and they do in theory offer it.

Not many students wish to get work experience as porters for some reason (maybe it doesn't look as engaging). Students obviously won't work but will be able to observe and converse which the time consuming element.

Staff groups do take the time to allow work experience but we have to realise they aren't paid for the supervision of otherwise taken off other routine duties.

The medics and a scientists do to an extent don't want to feel they're offering unrealistic future roles and want to feel that time spent on work experience has a tangible benefit of influencing academic children's career choices.

I would have thought so

I mean maybe it would give them a kick up the arse (or inspire them) to work harder. I wasn’t predicted great grades but then I did work experience with my mum at a nursery and I realised if I had to do that for my whole life I would jump off a building. So I started working really really hard and got all As and a U in geography.

I do see what you’re saying though, and I think most of the time it is probably not going to work, but in some cases it could be beneficial to them. Maybe the ones predicted 5s.

It's the numbers again and having no ability to select. If for instance the BBC opened itself to work experience for everyone interested in journalism they would be flooded. The point that there is no selection mechanism of any kind for work experience means that individual bodies basically do their own thing including just getting their mate's kids in or being choice about the school attended.