The cap on medical and dental student numbers in the UK

Is there a cap on medical and dental students?

Medical and dental school places are capped in each part of the UK, with “intake targets” used to limit the number of students a higher education provider may recruit in each year. There are caps for both home students and overseas/international students.

• Every year around 9,500 medical school places are made available across the UK to train new doctors. Since 2013, this figure has increased by around 2,000.
• There are around 1,100 dental school places made available across the UK each year. This figure has remained largely unchanged since 2013.

The UK Government has said medical and dental school places are capped in England “to ensure teaching, learning and assessment standards are maintained as well as ensuring there are enough high quality placements for each student.”

There was a temporary lifting of the caps for two years in 2020 and 2021. This was to accommodate the higher number of students meeting their university offers following changes to exam arrangements prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Calls to raise the medical and dental student caps

Despite an increase in the number of medical schools and places across the UK since the early 2000s, the UK does not train enough doctors to have a sustainable supply without recruiting qualified doctors from abroad. Similarly, demand for dental services is not being met by the current NHS dental workforce.

This has led to calls from the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee, as well as a number of healthcare sector bodies, for the UK to expand the number of doctors and dentists it trains.

The Labour party has said it would double the number of medical school places to 15,000 per year. This would include opening up to 15 new medical schools, expanding existing medical training centres, and delivering more clinical placements. It has said it would fund its proposal by abolishing the non-domiciled tax status, which allows some individuals to avoid paying UK income tax.

Challenges to expanding the cap

Expanding the cap on medical and dental school places is complicated by the cost of training, current university and clinical placement capacity, and the current number of clinically qualified academic staff who design and deliver courses.

The Government has estimated the ‘public’ cost for each medical or dental school place to be around £230,000. Around £65,000 of this figure is paid to students in the form of loans, which most medical and dental graduates repay in full over the course of their careers.

Using the Government’s figures, the Medical Schools Council has estimated the annual cost of increasing the number of medical students by 5,000 would be approximately £1 billion.

England’s NHS Long Term Workforce Plan

In June 2023, the NHS published a workforce plan for England backed by the UK Government. It modelled workforce supply and demand in the NHS over a 15-year period and set out actions to address the resulting shortfall in staff and skills.

The workforce plan contained several announcements on education and training for doctors and dentists in England, including:

• increasing medical and dental school places to 15,000 and 1,100 a year respectively by 2031/32;
• developing four-year undergraduate medical degree programmes;
• considering whether to introduce a tie-in period that would require dental graduates to work in the NHS for a number of years following graduation.

Health unions and thinktanks welcomed the plan’s announcements but called for a corresponding growth in educator capacity and warned shorter degrees could compromise the quality of medical graduates. The British Dental Associated criticised proposals for a tie-in period for dentists.

Further reading

• Commons Library briefing CBP-9734, Medical, dental, and healthcare students: UK numbers and student support arrangements.
• Commons Library briefing CBP-9731, The NHS workforce in England.
• Commons Library briefing CBP-9597, NHS dentistry in England.