YOUNG people growing across the North-East may be held back from a career in medicine as many schools are not offering a GCSE often required by medical schools, the BMA (British Medical Association) has warned.

To tackle the problem of a postcode lottery for prospective doctors and surgeons the BMA is calling for:

•All secondary schools to offer Triple Science (physics, biology and Chemistry) for those students that request it.

•Medical schools to use contextualised admissions, where universities consider additional information including further details about the applicant’s school, and the area they grew up in.

•Medical schools to work with local secondary schools to identify student potential and provide access courses and outreach schemes for these students

Charlie Bell a BMA spokesman, said:

“With 80 per cent of all medical students in the UK coming from just 20 per cent of the schools, we’re concerned that some young people, despite having the necessary ability to study medicine, are not given a chance to simply because of where they grew up.

“At a time when the government’s decision to scrap educational maintenance grants will create further barriers to low-income students becoming doctors, it is vital that young people who wish to pursue medicine must be encouraged and supported, whatever their background.

“The chance of becoming a doctor should not be limited because of the failure of some schools to offer the qualifications that pupils need to apply for medical school – and the failure of universities to alter grade requirements accordingly.

The analysis highlighted that particularly in the North-East and North West, there is a low number of students studying triple science in areas of deprivation. In Newcastle four out of ten schools fail to offer triple science and only one in five students study it.