Reception at the Royal Society for The Open University
and its partners in medical education,
the Universities of Exeter, Leeds and Plymouth
18 May 1999
Remarks by Sir John Daniel, Vice-Chancellor
The Open University
Welcome
It gives me very great pleasure to welcome you to this event. We celebrate this evening the development of new approaches to the training of doctors for tomorrow’s world.
May I first thank Lord Perry of Walton, who is our host this evening, and express our gratitude to the Royal Society for letting us use its premises once again. Next month it will be exactly thirty years since Lord Perry attended another important event at the Royal Society, the Inaugural Ceremony to mark the granting of a Royal Charter to the Open University.
At that ceremony the OU’s first Chancellor, Lord Crowther, charged the Open University with its radical mission of being open to people, open to places, open to methods and open to ideas. Yet outside the building the press and the educational establishment were deeply sceptical. Could ordinary people succeed in higher education? Could you really study properly without living on campus? Could modern technologies of communication contribute anything serious to higher education? Could this new University ever gain a reputation for quality?
Three decades have passed. All those questions have been answered with ringing affirmatives. Yet this evening’s event recalls that earlier ceremony. Four universities are proposing a radical but rational way to achieve our nationally declared objectives for preparing doctors for tomorrow’s world. But there are sceptics. You don’t take risks with medical education.
We agree. We intend to convince you this evening that our proposals are a vital element in the preparation of excellent doctors for a changing society.
We shall not take you through our proposals in detail. For that see our slides and converse with our colleagues. But first, the sponsors of tonight’s event, the University of Leeds, Bradford and Airedale NHS Trusts, and the Open University, will put our proposals in context.
So may I first invite Professor Pierre Guillou, Dean of the Leeds University Medical School to address you on behalf of the University of Leeds, and Bradford & Airedale NHS Trusts?
REMARKS BY PROFESSOR GUILLOU
Thank you Professor Guillou. We at the Open University are greatly enjoying our relationship with Leeds University and the Bradford and Airedale NHS.
In that context, may I express our deep sorrow at the sudden death last week of Mr Derek Fatchett, MP for Leeds Central? He supported the Leeds/OU bid strongly and had intended to be with us this evening. We mourn his loss and offer our sympathies to his family.
The proposals that are now before the Joint Implementation Group for the expansion of medical education entered the public domain two years ago. At that time Professors Lesley Southgate and Janet Grant published their text ‘Opportunities and Dreams’ on the website of the Association for the Study of Medical Education.
You have a copy of that farsighted proposal in your folders. It began the thinking that resulted in the concept of the Open University foundation course in medicine and the idea of a socially accountable medical school, distributed across the community, that is the model for the Peninsula Medical School.
Professor Southgate is Professor of Primary Care and Medical Education at the Royal Free and University College London Medical School. She is the UK’s leading expert on assessment in undergraduate medical education and on performance standards in medicine. She and Professor Grant, who is Professor of Medical Education at the Open University, are the heart of the OU’s medical education team.
The concepts that Professors Southgate and Grant originated have been developed over two years with input from colleagues at ten other medical schools. The slides on display here this evening summarise these proposals. Lesley, Janet and their colleagues from the four universities will be delighted to discuss them with you.
The proposals are now before the Joint Implementation Group for the expansion of medical education. That group is jointly chaired by Professor Brian Fender, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Mr Chris Kelly, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health. The other members are the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, Professor Alasdair Breckenridge, Chairman of the UK Funding Councils’ Joint Medical Advisory Committee, and Stephen Marston, Director for Institutions and Partnerships at the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
All four university partners, Exeter, Leeds, Plymouth and the OU, have appreciated the opportunity to present our proposals to the Joint Implementation Group. We found the Group’s questions penetrating and appropriate. We have faced similar questions every time that the Open University has extended its curriculum into a new area.
Thirty years ago, at that earlier event here at the Royal Society, even some those who supported the idea of the Open University probably doubted that it could achieve excellence in the teaching of science and engineering. Yet today the facts speak for themselves.
For example, more than half of all UK students enrolled in excellent-rated programmes in Earth Sciences are studying with the Open University. In Chemistry it’s just less than half. Last year the OU was the only university to achieve the maximum score of 24/24 in the teaching quality assessment of General Engineering.
And need I add that this year’s victory of the OU student team in the TV quiz University Challenge simply shows what a huge amount of mature talent is out there to be harnessed to the nation’s needs.
These are the facts that made our group of universities conclude that Open University input is crucial to the evolution of medical education for the next century. We have enormous respect for what is already achieved in the training of doctors. But in expanding medical education - by a further 1,000 places in the first instance - the country is looking for something more. We need doctors for tomorrow’s world, doctors for a changing society.
The role of the Open University foundation course in medicine is to open up an alternative route of entry to undergraduate medical education. It has a different mix of teaching and learning materials and methods, it provides superb support for students and their tutors, and it appeals to students who are already independent learners.
The arrivals from this new entry route will greatly enrich the third year of traditional medical programmes. Thirty years of experience has shown that OU students are highly motivated, mature in outlook, and skilled at juggling family and work commitments with their professional training.
These are precisely the qualities, aptitudes and attitudes that today’s doctors need for their postgraduate and continuing education after graduation. They are the skills that will be crucial to the professional performance of doctors practising in a changing society of changing technologies. That will be the society of the next century.
The government has made it clear that in expanding the supply of doctors it does not simply want more of the same. The times call for diversity. The proposals that our four universities have put together, with the help and support of many other medical schools, will provide both diversity and quality.
Thank you for joining us this evening. I invite you to view our displays and talk to my colleagues. I hope that you will all leave here as committed supporters of our proposals to expand and diversify the training of doctors for a new century.