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)

I second this, not only are GCSE results only one step in the process, having a career aim can motivate kids to work hard to get good A levels. Also, ‘medicine’ isn’t just being a Dr, there are a myriad of medical professions, some require a degree, others don’t, and there are foundation degrees and apprenticeships for some roles too. Your system sounds really privilege based @mids2019, and exactly the kind of elitist bullshit we need to be moving away from.

I've done widening participation work in the NHS before. When it works well, kids who are bright but not necessarily very focussed can go away enthused and more focussed, with something to work towards. Taster days including some time in the clinical sim suite, a q & a with a few different staff (including non-clinical) and a tour of e.g. the labs, with a session with an HR/recruitment bod about entry requirements, interviews etc can work incredibly well.
Clinical work experience for medical school doesn't have to be trailing round a hospital following a doctor. Volunteering with St John's or the local hospice can be much more valuable.

The NHS is a huge organisation that employs people from a wide range of academic abilities so yes you are being unreasonable to restrict opportunities to the local grammar school (who probably need such opportunities least!) though i take your point that the work experience students should be appropriately matched.
And the whole point of these work experience schemes is to give DISADVANTAGED students a chance, NOT to give opportunities to those who "have connections".

Exactly

@MellersSmellers Since when? They are not just for disadvantaged dc at all. Never were. They should be for young people who are educationally equipped to make the most of them and are very keen on that career. Near me the deprived cohort is very small. Why should they take up places shadowing doctors when others who also aren’t rich, but might be very driven to be a doctor, cannot get a look in? It needs to be fair because of limited reserves. No places should ever go to the dc of doctors and staff by circumventing the system. They have the most advantage of anyone without being given more!

DC who are tutored and are predicted 3/4 really won’t get up to 8/9 GCSE grades for A levels! They mostly need Chemistry A level.

Agree OP. Work experience in the hospital but surely not with the medics. Complete waste of everyone’s time.

Surely the work experience should be angled at a field (medicine) not such a specific role?

i work for a private company (ftse 100) where there is nothing practical a 15/16/17 year old can do even if they are Einstein and predicted all 9’s. There are work experience weeks curated to cover the breadth of the business. Places are awarded by open application handled by an outsourced third party but matching company values. The experience is good fun and enlightening for students but matches the school day as without something practical to do, there are too many hours to occupy.

and all these school kids shadowing dr’s … im
actually quite appalled it is even allowed. I will always say yes to the presence of a student medic but no way am I indulging a school kid in any aspect of my medical care or medical information! Even if they are ‘grammar school’ or straight 9’s, the chances of them going on to be a medic are probably small too.

I think you’re coming over very snobby. The idea is to inspire kids and just because someone has low grade predictions doesn’t mean they can’t improve with the right motivation. Also, increasingly lots of people have less traditional paths into all kinds of industries and aren’t all (equivalent of) straight A students. That’s not necessary for ALL career types within specific industries.

Came here with this sentiment. Widening participation, done properly, will introduce teens to jobs they never knew existed, because they have grown up without privilege and access to this knowledge. It’s not about telling non academic kids they should think about becoming a doctor. It’s about encouraging curiosity to explore other avenues and maybe, just maybe some kid with poor self esteem might be motivated to work a wee bit harder, pass their maths and English and apply for courses to become HCAs or paramedics ( for example)
THESE OPPORTUNITIES SHOULD BE OPEN TO ALL SCHOOLS

@Littleredridingoodie. Unless you see dc who don’t get onto the scheme, you don’t know who isn’t chosen and how they stack up against who is. Company values? Looking for future staff? At what levels? Cleaners or graduates? Or do you see it as a social mobility exercise? We do have some odd company values these days that are far away from making money. Except the people applying for WE don’t know what the values are. Cannot see that’s fair either!

Work experience is NOT about
looking for future staff! It’s about giving as
broad a spectrum as possible of kids with an interest in the general business area and the where with all to fill out a basic application, a week in the workplace. The third party who administer this are educational experts who pitch the questions (and experience) at a level appropriate to that age group and matching what the company is about. I think that the size of the scheme means that most kids who can give a basic answer (think knowing at a very high ie basic level what the company does) and submit the form in the time frame provided get on. Diversity and inclusion data is collected so there is data to the same extent there is for any job advertised.

I find it quite bizarre that anyone thinks that kid’s work experience is about recruitment. For most businesses this falls under corporate responsibility/social responsibility/maintaining good relationships in the community where they operate. I doubt that high numbers of any school kids go on to do the job they did work experience in later in life. I highly doubt that my job will look the same as it does now in 10’years or even if it will exist. The point to work experience is that it broadens horizons. For some kids the best and most memorable aspect is getting to have lunch in a corporate environment. Superficial? Maybe. However, I think there’s value in that even for a child who has never seen such a workplace. At 16 I had already worked for two years and was onto my second part time job. Although the jobs equipped me with some skills, I had no clue that the type of jobs in the sector I now work in existed and how pleasant the environment was. I would have really benefited from the work experience offered by my company.

Personally I'd we want to take work experience seriously we have to fund it. Having we pro bono obviously introduces unfairness and places are quite arbitarily.doled out.

In some ways work experience acts as an introduction to completion for internment and seconmeents that employers love to see on cvs. I just think we have not of a mess where employers have to be seen as inclusive when it comes to spending time with students. Again this is not out of wanting to be mean but being pragmatic about how we look at such things usefully.

I think you/your work place need to think carefully about what the objective of work experience is. My view, my company’s view and the view of many other’s who have posted is that it is about broadening experience of the world of work. It is not an internship. It is not the first stage of a selection process for a medical degree. You then decide on what resources to apply to based on this objective.

if medics are being distracted from their roles to support work experience then that’s a problem in itself. Making sure all the kids attending are grade A, committed medics to be won’t reduce that workload. It’s interesting though that the suggestion here is that work experience isn’t a burden or distraction when it’s their own family/network….

Agree. There must be a wide range of jobs in a hospital or similar that people can do.

What is your job role? Are you a medic? Do the student have to shadow you?

@mids2019Personally I would prefer the NHS to concentrate on the day job and reduce waiting lists. Y10 dc don’t need this time with you.

Your salary isn’t affected I assume so it’s not you taking a hit because you are losing pay. If it’s funded, it’s the general public taking the hit because it’s diverting funds. Pro bono is where lawyers work for well below their standard rate for people with no money but nonetheless need help to go to court on an important point of law. It costs them personally to do it.

The best solution is to get the Trust to move to 6th formers: work experience really matters to these students. If not, get admin to do a day visit for a group of students and walk them round pointing out jobs!

mids has yet to be drawn on the fact that lots of us don't know of any NHS trust taking 14 year olds for work experience...

Indeed. Some trusts do offer work experience from age 14 but I don’t think any offer clinical work experience under 16, they are non patient facing roles only, eg admin, so the medics wouldn’t be involved. I could be wrong…

I don't think you are.

I don’t think I am either, Piggywaspushed 😂

I suppose she could be talking about schools’ taster days with SIMs sessions rather than work shadowing. A far better way to engage and inspire young people into considering careers in healthcare.

That said…

My DS loves teaching. He just spent several weeks running SIMs sessions in the evenings (after finishing his shift) for the recently graduated doctors before they start work. TBF he was paid… minimum wage. There weren’t very many volunteers to give up their time off to run the sessions, unsurprisingly. I can see why there might be some push back if the medics they are being asked to run loads of sessions.

But only wanting to offer places to grammar school kids… 🙄

I don’t think the work experience should be too narrow. I know young people who had thought they wanted to be doctors but went on to do other NHS careers.

Until recently I volunteered at my local hospital. We often had 6th form students volunteering as they were considering a career in the NHS; not necessarily as doctors or nurses. Almost without exception they worked hard, were diligent and were good team members.

My friend's granddaughter, also a friend of my son's both became medics via the widening participation schemes. One has graduated & is now a resident doctor. The other is in her final year.

Boys grammar students may be in the image of current consultants but will they be better doctors?

@Efrogwraig Did they have grade 3/4s at GCSE? That’s the issue. I’d bet they didn’t. Widening participation is not the same as letting dc think they can do this career but are not academic.

One of them did, yes.