GMC reply to letter by Harris, “Five new medical schools: a decline in standards is inevitable”

While the matter of employment and increasing the number of home grown doctors is not for the GMC, we decide which organisations can award UK primary medical qualifications, and we will not allow the increase in student numbers or additional medical schools to lead to any decline in the high standards that UK medical education offers.1

Our standards are there to ensure that patients do not come to harm by making sure that doctors and medical students are properly supported in their training.

All new medical schools are subject to an intensive process of visits and scrutiny which includes visiting new schools at least once a year from before students start right through until the first cohort has graduated.

When a new medical school application is put forward we decide whether we will quality assure that school. If it does not meet our requirements at this very early stage of development, we will not allow it to progress through the process. If it seems to meet our requirements, we visit to determine if the school is meeting the standards we set out in Promoting Excellence: Standards for Medical Education and Training.2 Only then can it accept applications from prospective students.

The school then has to show, through a robust quality assurance process, how it continues to meet these standards from when the first students start right through until they graduate. Only once we are satisfied that these standards have been met, and will continue to be met, do we decide whether the school can be approved to award medical degrees. When this does not happen, and if we have evidence that the school is not meeting our standards, we can act. Indeed, we have done so in the past by delaying start dates for students or not allowing a school to award a medical degree.

None of this is, or ever will be, a “box ticking exercise.”1