What the educators are saying

Men and ethnic minority students tend to perform less well We have known for some time that academic ability before entering medical school is a good predictor of success on a medical course. It is now becoming clear that being male or coming from an ethnic minority background is associated with a relatively poor performance compared with female students. A study at the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds found that male students and ethnic minority students showed a relative underperformance in their year 3 assessment. It also found that application form data were similar and independent predictors of academic potential compared with academic performance before medical school. Mature students performed exceptionally well. Although this study was limited to the results of a year 3 assessment, its findings fit with other recently publicised results and show that we need to examine why male and ethnic minority students tend to perform less well than …