Back young Scots

That the number of Scots in our medical schools is at a ten-year low comes as no surprise to me (The Scotsman, 19 July). Way back when she was Cabinet Secretary for Health, Nicola Sturgeon cut the number of funded places (reserved for Scottish and EU residents) by 50 per year, reputedly because too many were emigrating to England on graduation.

Only recently has the SNP government realised the stupidity and short-sightedness of this and tried to reverse it.

Meantime our universities, quite rightly, because they have clearly sufficient capacity along with the NHS to train more, have, as you point out, recruited paying students from the rest of the UK and from non-eu countries.

There is much to be said for this: when I was at Edinburgh medical school in the late 1960s my class was remarkably and successfully international but the vast majority of us were from Scottish schools, mostly state schools. That is clearly no longer the case.

In recent years it has been my pleasure and privilege to meet and mentor a number of would-be medical students in my old high school.

I have been impressed by the support that school provides and by the determination of these bright students. All have persevered in their bid for a place in one of our medical schools, a process of incredible hurdles. Even with five excellent Highers they have struggled.

I am aware that every medical school now exerts great efforts to help students through this protracted and

bureaucratic labyrinth and this, I believe, is not entirely driven by the government pressures to increase access.

There are quite clearly many Scottish 18-year-olds leaving our high schools with qualifications sufficient for any medical school and who have the ambition, personality and determination to become doctors.

Our medical schools have the capacity though they may have to cut back on the lucrative business of taking in students from outside Scotland. All it needs is a government which will put its money where its mouth is by funding more places for deserving and qualified Scots.

(DR) ALAN RODGER

Clairmont Gardens, Glasgow