The GPhC has joined a new group, led by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) to address the differential attainment and awarding gap experienced by black pharmacy students and Foundation Trainees.
The RPS has today published a statement about the working group, which includes plans for collaborative work to develop recommendations and actions to improve the differential attainment and awarding gap in a meaningful and sustainable way.
This work will focus on fostering a more inclusive and supportive learning environment and the recommendations will be based around the following themes:
• Inspiration, aspiration and role models
• Cultural competence training for tutors
• Debiasing processes and supporting transition into the workplace
• Data collection
The GPhC has already started work on tackling differential attainment, which included significant changes to our initial education and training standards for pharmacists in 2021 and enhanced requirements relating to equality, diversity and fairness, to help combat health inequalities and discrimination.
This will continue to be an important area of focus for the GPhC going forward, linked closely to the commitments in our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy.
Other key work in this context includes planned changes to our accreditation processes and quality assurance methodology, the introduction of accreditation of pharmacist Foundation training by the GPhC in advance of the 2025/2026 training year, and ongoing requirements for action plans from schools of pharmacy whose graduates have a consistently lower pass rate.
You can read about our recent work on differential attainment in the GPhC contribution to the Inclusive Pharmacy Practice bulletin.
Chief Executive of the GPhC, Duncan Rudkin, said:
“Research and evidence show that there are different levels of academic and career attainment amongst certain groups of students and pharmacy is no different. The long-term impact of education, training and work environments means that opportunities, experience and attainment are not equal for everyone.
“We’ve already started to confront some of those challenges through setting our EDI strategy for change. However, we know there is more to do. We welcome the opportunity to be part of this important working group, led by the RPS. As the regulator, we cannot tackle these issues alone and it’s important we all continue to work together, using the different levers and influence that we have to identify targeted interventions that make a difference.”