Doctors: Graduates
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much has been spent on training UK medical students in each of the last five years, and how many of those publicly-funded graduates did not secure Foundation or speciality training places in the NHS.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The following table sets out the total costs incurred by NHS England in providing medical education in England between 2021/22 and 2025/26, split by placement costs and bursaries:
Financial year | Placement costs (£) | Bursaries (£) | Total Education and Training costs (£) |
2025/26* | 897,330,129 | 146,069,562 | 1,043,399,691 |
2024/25 | 853,829,035 | 140,565,328 | 994,394,363 |
2023/24 | 789,778,565 | 134,498,120 | 924,276,685 |
2022/23 | 733,337,634 | 126,186,114 | 859,523,748 |
2021/22 | 708,292,911 | 113,419,097 | 821,712,008 |
Source: NHS England
Notes:
- The Department of Health and Social Care does not have the information requested for the last five full financial years, so the accompanying table incorporates the forecast spend for 2025/26.
- The Department of Health and Social Care does not hold information on the costs incurred by the Department for Education or by bodies that the Department for Education sponsors, such as the Student Loans Company or the Office for Students. These areas of DfE provision will include tuition and maintenance loans as well as the Strategic Priorities grant which supports high cost STEM subjects.
The United Kingdom Foundation Programme Office has sought to allocate Foundation Programme places to all eligible applicants in each of the past five years.
The General Medical Council (GMC) publishes data on the proportion of doctors completing foundation year two who have subsequently entered the specialty training pipeline in each subsequent year. The data does not differentiate between the place of undergraduate study of doctors but given over 90% of doctors completing foundation year two are United Kingdom graduates, the data provides a good proxy for progression on to specialty training. This data is available as part of the GMC’s National Training Survey at the following link:
https://edt.gmc-uk.org/progression-reports/recruitment-from-f2
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