The Undergraduate Programme for medicine has for the last several years been able to review its exam results as part of the annual process called Annual Programme Review, presented in a meeting that tends to occur in September every year. In doing that, we have noted some concerning patterns in the ways in which students perform in assessments, particularly in written assessments which are examined and marked completely anonymously.
We have seen that female students do somewhat better than male students, some older students (over 27-28) do worse than younger students and that students from ethnic groups apart from White (British) tend not to do as well as White British students. After the meeting held in September, the management team together with Prof Sarah Purdy, Head of Bristol Medical School, agreed it was time to investigate this in more detail and particularly consider whether anything could be changed or altered to improve the situation regarding ethnicity.
To date, we have engaged with a focus group of students in Years 3, 4, and 5, to attempt to grasp what they consider are possible reasons and remediations for this. One thing to consider is how “white” is our curriculum, and I would value input and comments from students on that, especially with constructive ideas to act as a remedy. We have also looked at the published literature in this area and spoken to other medical schools who have noted similar trends with respect to ethnicity.
Our focus groups continue and have yet to report. Without wanting to rush ahead before hearing from those sources, experiences from other undergraduate and postgraduate courses suggest this is a complex issue, multi-factorial and with no easy fix solution. You may not have been asked to take part in a focus group, but you may still have something worthwhile to say and be heard on. David Cahill in the Medical School (d.j.cahill@bris.ac.uk) and Lina Alim in Galenicals (president@galenicals.org.uk) would love to hear from you as an individual or as a group, or anonymously if you prefer. Nothing you say will have any impact on your progress or on your record, and it is vital that we get as full a picture as possible on this. Thank you.