National recruitment to dental foundation training on track for 2012

The first applications to National Recruitment for dental foundation training posts in England and Wales closed on Friday 14 October 2011.  Over 1100 individuals applied for places and all those eligible will be interviewed during November by trained and calibrated dental trainers and educators, with Postgraduate Deaneries allocating successful candidates to training practices in the Spring for year-long posts starting next August.

1190 applications (not all of which may be eligible) have been received for places on dental foundation (vocational) training programmes in England and Wales. This is fewer than the total number of final year students at UK Dental Schools.  Most training posts will start in August 2012, with a small number starting in February. This first ever co-ordinated recruitment exercise for England and Wales was organized by COPDEND (The UK Committee of Postgraduate Dental Deans and Directors), working in partnership with London Deanery.  Applicants to England and Wales may also have applied to Scotland and Northern Ireland and vice versa.

All those eligible to start dental foundation training Year 1 next year in England and Wales will be interviewed and take part in a number of selection exercises at one of 5 regional centres (London, Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester) during November.  Those who are successful will be allocated to Deaneries on merit, based on their selection centre performance and stated preference for training in a particular scheme.  A training scheme normally comprises 12 training practices and covers a defined geographical area.

A second stage allocation to training practices will be carried out by Postgraduate Deaneries next Spring, once Trainers and Training Practices have been confirmed. The national process has been developed following several years of piloting centralised recruitment in more than half of UK Deaneries.

Mrs Elizabeth Jones, Postgraduate Dental Dean, London Deanery and Chair of the National Recruitment Working group said, “ I am very  pleased that the on line applications have  worked so well. We have been fortunate to have expertise from the London Deanery Recruitment Team who have successfully managed national recruitment to medical training programmes for the last few years.”

Professor Chris Franklin, Chair of COPDEND said “We are carrying out a  thorough training and calibration exercise for our interviewers and assessors to make sure that we can give every single applicant a valid and reliable experience at the Assessment Centres.”