Medical Schools Council
| Predecessor | Council of Heads of Medical Schools |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Woburn House, London, WC1 |
|
Chief Executive
|
Katie Petty-Saphon |
|
Chair
|
Professor Jenny Higham |
|
Revenue (2015)
|
£1 million |
| Website | www |
The Medical Schools Council (MSC) is an organisation that represents the interests and ambitions of the 33 publicly funded medical schools and one post graduate school in the United Kingdom. The membership is made up of the heads, or deans of the schools. It was formerly known as the Council of Heads of Medical Schools.
The Medical Schools Council is involved in aiding medical schools improve access for applicants with a broader range of backgrounds. In the late nineties, the Medical Schools Council (then CHMS) looked at admission data and concluded that men and people from ethnic minorities were suffering from discrimination when they applied to medical schools. It was noted that the gender variation may "reflect the fact that girls are doing better academically than boys in school."
While men still currently outnumber women in the medical profession, the General Medical Council reported that the number of female doctors is continuously increasing. A 17% increase was also reported in the number of UK Graduate GPs who are Black and Minority Ethnic (BME).
Medical schools have been criticized for failing to enroll enough students from lower-income backgrounds with research showing that 80 percent of applications to medicine came from only 20 percent of schools. It was also found that approximately half of all applicants came from private or grammar schools. In 2008, after the Tooke inquiry into Modernising Medical Careers, the Council were again asked to look at selection of medical school applicants. Much of the Medical Schools Council’s widening participation work was initiated as response to the 2012 report Fair Access to the Professions from the Child Poverty and Social Mobility Commission. This report stated that
"…medicine lags behind other professions both in the focus and in the priority it accords to these issues. It has a long way to go when it comes to making access fairer, diversifying its workforce and raising social mobility."
In July 2013 the "Selecting for Excellence" project began, which the Medical Schools Council had commissioned to widen participation in medicine and analyse the barriers for applicants from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The report found that in the preceding three-year period, just under half of the schools and colleges in the UK did not provide any applicants to study medicine at British universities. The final report launched with 68 recommendations which are currently being implemented in December 2014. Medical schools were encouraged to do more to help disadvantaged students with their applications and preparations for admission tests.
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