School of Medicine is advancing opportunities
ARU is aiming to ease Essex’s workforce issues by levelling the playing field
ARU's School of Medicine in Chelmsford
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is leading the way in offering opportunities for people of all backgrounds to study medicine, with almost 40% of its 2025/26 cohort meeting widening participation criteria.
Last month, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting announced a package of measures to help pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds access careers in healthcare. Currently across the nation, 80% of medical students come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, and four fifths of students come from just 20% of schools.
However, Anglia Ruskin University’s School of Medicine, the only undergraduate medical school in Essex, is identifying barriers to access in the system, and taking measures to address them.
These include an award-winning summer school, which provides school pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds with a week-long residential course to experience what it is like to be a medical student. This programme has already won several awards and has recently been nominated for a NEON Widening Access Initiative (Outreach) Award – 2026 applications for the summer school are now open.
Currently, 39% of the School of Medicine’s students meet widening participation criteria, which takes into account several factors including growing up in a deprived area, growing up in care, having access to free school meals, and whether they are a registered carer.
“We want the best students, regardless of background. Currently, candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds who would make fantastic doctors are not given the same equity of opportunity as those from non-disadvantaged backgrounds.
“It is important to create equity in the admissions process. It is not about meeting quotas, but about identifying the barriers in the system which stand in the way of some students from meeting their potential.”
Dr Simon Cork, co-lead for Widening Participation at Anglia Ruskin University’s School of MedicineThe School, which opened in 2018 and has seen 268 students graduate since 2023, has a clear vision to increase the pipeline of doctors for Essex, parts of which currently suffer from extremely high patient to GP ratios. Currently around 60% of ARU Medicine students are from Essex, or the surrounding counties.
Medical students undertake Foundation training following graduation. The allocation of foundation posts is managed through a national process, often placing graduates far from their host university. In partnership with NHS England, ARU secured protection for a proportion of Essex-based Foundation posts for its graduates.
This has had a huge impact on the proportion of ARU medical students taking up Foundation posts locally, rising from 5% in 2023 to 47% in 2025.
“If a student comes to us from our local area, they are more likely to stay, train, and practice as doctors within the region, helping to address local healthcare workforce shortages.
“Around 60% of our cohort are from Essex and surrounding counties. This then feeds in to local allocation for Foundation training.”
Dr Jo-Anne Johnson, Head of Undergraduate Medicine at the School of Medicine