Nicola Sturgeon announces £23m to help disadvantaged students enter medicine in Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon is to spend £23m on boosting the number of students from poor backgrounds at Scottish medical schools after a study found they were dominated by attendees from the most affluent homes.

The first minister’s initiative draws heavily on data disclosed by the Guardian that only 4.3% of students at Scotland’s five medical schools came from the poorest 20% of postcodes, with Scottish students more likely to be from private schools or with parents from elite professions.

Announcing a new programme of funding over the next five years to support applications from poorer students, Sturgeon said those figures were evidence that the country was failing to tackle systematic disadvantage, leaving the NHS losing out on talented doctors.

“At present only one in 20 new doctors come from the most disadvantaged areas of our country; if we had truly equal access to the medical profession, that figure would be one in five,” Sturgeon told an audience at Queen Margaret university on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

“That’s bad for those individuals who are denied a fair chance to enter a good career. And it’s also bad for society as a whole – we lose out on too many of the talented and dedicated medics of the future.”

Sturgeon drew on data from the major study by academics at the universities of Dundee and Central Lancashire of 33,000 students who had applied to 22 medical schools around the UK between 2009 and 2012.

It found that on several measures Scotland’s medical schools had the most privileged intake of any in the UK: 35% of students had come from private schools, compared with 27% in England. In all, 86% of Scottish students had parents from the highest-ranked professions, the largest proportion of the four UK nations.

Based on postcodes – an area which was less comparable across the four nations because of different measuring methods – 54% of Scottish medical students came from the 20% most affluent postcodes compared with 38% in England, 55% in Wales and 51% in Northern Ireland.

Sturgeon’s initiative will see 50 more places opened at medical schools, with priority given to applicants from poorer backgrounds, alongside a new “entry level programme” based at a medical school to help secondary school pupils from deprived areas prepare to study medicine.

There will also be a graduate entry programme which would include an offer to pay fees, conditional on students agreeing to take up jobs in Scottish hospitals and NHS services after they qualify.

Sturgeon’s announcement also included £3m to train 500 advanced nurse practitioners, who would have extra medical skills to support GPs and hospital doctors, and, a £1m fund to help nursing and midwifery students overcome financial hardship while they were studying – as well as continuing with free tuition.

Dr Jon Dowell, a co-author of the study, from Dundee university medical schools, said Scottish universities needed to develop more sophisticated ways of ensuring students from deprived backgrounds were being selected, including having free school meals or the school they attended.

Using postcodes was too crude, he added, since wealthy applicants would often live in areas with higher levels of deprivation. Dowell also said clearer rules were needed on what priority medical schools should give to voluntary work by applicants: a system open to abuse if wealthy teenagers could afford volunteering abroad.

But he said Sturgeon’s proposals were a good start: “Bringing extra resources to the medical training environment which is specifically designed to encourage medical schools to widen access in this way is definitely a significant, positive step.”

Mita Dhullipala, a medical student at Glasgow university and widening participation campaigner on the British Medical Association’s students committee, said the medical schools initiative was very welcome.

But she said much greater effort was also needed to advise aspiring medical students at an earlier stage at school, helping them choose the right courses and find the right voluntary experience, such as helping out in doctors’ surgeries or care homes, if that was needed.

“The complaint we get most from schoolchildren is that when they compete [for medical school places] with children from private schools, they haven’t got a chance, they haven’t got the same resources or pastoral care [at school],” Dhullipala said.

Katie Petty-Saphon, chief executive of the Medical Schools Council, which commissioned the study, said Sturgeon’s announcement offered many of the measures that the medical schools believed were necessary, including “gateway year” courses.

The council “welcomes the measures taken to address the barriers that bright but disadvantaged students face in accessing the medical degree across Scotland, as they do throughout the UK”, she said. “We are delighted that the work of the medical schools in highlighting these barriers is being addressed at this level, and look forward to hearing details on the first minister’s announcement.”