The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7399 p533
6 May 2006

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· Agenda for Change
· Independent prescribing
· Emergency contraception
· Statistics (2)
· Medicines use reviews (2)
· Section 60 Order
· Education
· The Society

Letters to the Editor

Education

Effects of dumbing down of examinations results

From Mr J. D. Thomas, MRPharmS

The difficulties experienced by community pharmacists, as often expressed in these columns, with postgraduate students’ lack of elementary mathematical, pharmaceutical and communication skills may now have been explained by the revelations about De Montfort University and the acknowledgement in the media (by a landmark ruling under the Freedom of Information Act) that pass marks have been lowered to 26 per cent in some modules, one of which was mathematics. It appears to me that scores of first-year pharmacy students’ examination results may have been manipulated to save embarrassment that the students were not up to the rigours of the pharmacy training programme.

How many hundreds of others in past years have also received similar inflated results?

The external examiners told De Montfort University in Leicester that its action of upgrading was both improper and deplorable. In response, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society merely issued a bland statement that this pharmacy course is on probation and being monitored by a five-point action plan (PJ, 29 April, p493). In my opinion, this is hardly the action to satisfy the public perception that half of new pharmacy graduates may not be up to the required standard.

As pharmacy’s regulatory body, our Society must be seen to be proactive. If there had been a comparable incident in community pharmacy, the hounds of the inspectorate would have, rightly, been out persecuting and prosecuting. If the head of any school of pharmacy believes that the intake of students lacks the calibre to meet the required standard, then it is the school’s selection process that is at fault, and the remedy for this is in its own hands. Heads also state that pharmacy courses are over prescribed, so there should be little difficulty in recruiting suitably qualified students.

Once again, in the present climate of dumbing down examination results, it is the poor hard-working student who is being abused.

Let us hope that our Society will ensure that pharmacy will be an exception and be a leading light and ensure that excellence is paramount for the safety of medicines and public.

David Thomas
Patshull, Shropshire

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