Tackling differential attainment

Differential attainment (DA) is what we call the gap between attainment levels of different groups of doctors. It occurs across many professions.

It exists in both undergraduate and postgraduate contexts, across exam pass rates, recruitment and Annual Review of Competence Progression outcomes and can be an indicator that training and medical education may not be fair.

Differentials that exist because of ability are expected and appropriate. Differentials connected solely to age, gender or ethnicity of a particular group are unfair. Our standards require training pathways to be fair for everyone.

Find out what we, and others, are doing to tackle differential attainment, and how we are progressing together. While this work looks specifically at the barriers and protective factors for doctors from ethnic minority background and those who trained overseas, the issues are reflected across higher education and in other healthcare professions and it is likely to be relevant to physician associates (PA), anaesthesia associates (AA) and PA and AA course providers.