New survey of medical students in England coming soon
If you’re a medical student in England, we need you to help fuel the fight for fair funding by giving us an up-to-date picture of your finances. Please keep an eye on your emails for a survey we’ll be sending to all medical students in England in coming weeks.
For our campaign to be a success, YOUR voices must be front and centre in any negotiations with the Government.
Fix our funding - Stop the drop
Since 2012, financial support for medical students has totally stagnated. One of the biggest issues is the massive drop in funding that both undergraduate and graduate students experience when they stop receiving full Student Finance maintenance funding and transition into NHS bursary funded years. This drop leaves the average student £2,766 worse off in these years.
Allowing students to retain their entitlement to full student finance maintenance funding would cost the treasury £24 million – this is just 0.04% of Student Finance England’s annual outgoings.
Fixing this for medical students in England should be an easy decision. Not only is it the right and fair thing to do, sparing medical students' fear of financial hardship, it would attract students from a more diverse range of backgrounds to medicine.
Why is the situation worse in England?
There are big disparities in medical student funding across all four nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and the funding is highly fragmented. English domiciled medical students studying an undergraduate course in England are eligible for the lowest funding of any UK nation.
In England, this is most notably due to the reduction in funding provided by Student Finance from year 5 onwards for undergraduate-entry and from year 2 onwards for graduate-entry, when students become eligible for the NHS Bursary. This results in an overall drop of £3,979 of available financial support in these years. This is visualised below.
Figure 1 – Graph showing total maintenance funding available to English domiciled students eligible for full maintenance loans over the course of a 5-year undergraduate medicine degree.
During NHS-bursary-funded-years, English medical students entitled to the highest rate maintenance loan receive 57.7% less funding than Welsh students receive.
English domiciled medical students receive £24,782 less funding towards living costs during a 6-year undergraduate (including intercalated year) than Welsh domiciled students, as they are entitled to full student finance provision.
The worrying impact of unfair funding
In 2022, we carried out a student survey that produced a number of troubling results:
- 44.3% of medical students reported running out of money during the academic year.
- The NHS Bursary covers only a third of medical student’s living costs on average.
- 75.7% of medical students reported working either during term time and/or during the holidays, of which 73.1% reported it having a negative, or very negative impact on their academic achievement.
- 3.9% of medical students reported having to use a foodbank during their studies.
At a time when the Government is committed to getting the NHS back on its feet and increasing the number of doctors to meet patient demands, it is essential that medical students are supported and valued. It is not only students, but patients who will suffer in the long term if the Government cannot provide a financially viable pathway into the medical profession.