Quality | 2009.08.04
Majority of medical students still privately educated
Medical students are far more likely to have gone to a private school than they were five years ago, statistics reveal.
In 2004, 57% of applicants from private schools were accepted into medical schools in the UK, while 49% of applicants from state schools were accepted, according to the university admissions service Ucas.
The latest figures, from 2008, show that despite attempts to widen the social mix of the profession, 67% of applicants from private schools were accepted as medical students, while the proportion of state school applicants had dropped to 41%.
The figures, uncovered by Pulse magazine, come less than a month after a cross-party government report argued that family wealth and a private education remain the key to well-paid professions.
Alan Milburn\'s report, Unleashing Aspiration , accused the professional classes of a "closed-shop mentality", which the former cabinet minister said made Britain one of the least socially mobile countries in Europe.
The typical doctor of the future will grow up in a family that is better off than five in six of all families in the UK, the report said. Only 4% of medical students come from the lowest two socioeconomic groups, it found. GPs said medical school applicants were increasingly asked to demonstrate the kind of extracurricular activities that could stack the odds in favour of the privately educated. Medical students are three times more likely to have gone to a private school than the student population as a whole, Ucas said.
Its figures show a 66.5% increase in the number of students applying to medical school between 2004 and 2008. Now, 11,657 apply from state schools – four times more than the 2,918 from private schools.
Kenton Lewis, head of widening participation at St George\'s, University of London, which has a medical school, said the figures were depressing. He said: "Obviously, there is still work to be done, but medical schools are committed to equality of access."
He said that at St George\'s, 71.2% of medical students came from state schools, compared with 48% in 1997.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/a[...]ents-private-schools-education
