University Intake Targets for Medicine 2024-25

2. SFC receives annual guidance from the Scottish Government’s Health Workforce Directorate, providing recommended intakes for medical schools in Scotland, following consideration of medical undergraduate numbers by the Medical Undergraduate Group. This letter of guidance for AY 2024-25 is provided in Annex A.

3. In line with Scottish Government guidance, the university intake target for Medicine for AY 2024-25 is 1,417 students. This is unchanged from AY 2023-24.
4. The target for AY 2024-25 is split between an intake of 1,339 students with Scottish domicile/‘Home Fee’, rest of UK (rUK), and Republic of Ireland (Rol) status, and an intake of 78 students with ‘International’ fee status.
5. In addition, the intake targets for the Gateway to Medicine programmes at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Glasgow have been maintained at 70 students.

6. The intake target for Widening Access (WA) students in AY 2024-25 will also remain at 110 students. The Scottish Government remains committed to its 2021 promise to double the number of WA intake target from 60 to 120, however, given the recent increases in the number of WA places, it has decided to hold the number at 110, with the distribution of places also remaining the same.
7. WA students must be from SIMD 20 areas and/or be from a care–experienced background to meet Ministerial aims and aspirations on WA and participation.  

8. Once again, in AY 2024-25 there will be no specific Scottish domicile targets. Whilst Ministers remain committed to increasing the numbers of Scottish-domiciled students studying Medicine, the focus on delivering this outcome has shifted to increasing the WA intake target and other interventions targeted at Scottish-domiciled students, rather than setting a minimum target.
9. The Scottish Government, universities, NHS Education for Scotland and SFC are jointly taking forward a piece of work to support increasing the Scottish-domiciled and WA applicant pool for Medicine. On behalf of the Scottish Government, SFC will continue to monitor the number of Scottish-domiciled students, including as a proportion of the overall medical school intake.

10. The Scottish Government has expressed concerns regarding the over-recruitment of international students and is considering possible next steps. For AY 2024-25 SFC will continue to monitor the number of international students and report these numbers to Scottish Government colleagues.

11. SFC may recover funds from universities who under-recruit eligible students against the annual core intake target for students with Scottish domicile/home fee status, rUK and RoI students by more than 3%. SFC may also apply financial penalties to universities who over-recruit and exceed their intake target for all Scottish domicile/home fee, rUK and RoI entrants by more than 10%. Any action will be subject to the consideration of any mitigating evidence presented by the university. Specific allocations of funded student places will be provided in the final university funding announcement for AY 2024-25 in May.
12. Should Medical Schools foresee any difficulties in meeting the intake targets for AY 2024-25 beyond normal tolerance levels (as set out above), they should make this known to SFC at the earliest opportunity, using the contact details below.

13. Please contact Duncan Condie, Senior Funding Policy Officer, tel: 0131 313 6671, email: dcondie@sfc.ac.uk.

Richard Maconachie FCCA
Director of Finance