From the start of the 2020 school year, the universities will decide themselves how many students they will accept in the second year of health studies, announced Agnès Buzyn as part of her Health project.
This is news that should greatly relieve young people who wish to move towards medical studies. It’s the end of the Numerus clausus, announced Thursday, January 10 the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn as part of her health bill. The document “should be sent to the Council of State next week” and sent to Parliament before the summer, she said, wishing it to be examined “as a matter of urgency”.
Thus, from the start of the 2020 school year, the universities will be able to determine themselves how many students they will accept in the second and third years of medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry, pharmacy and midwifery. In detail, the number of places offered by each university must take into account “admission objectives in the first year of the second cycle”, “arrested by the university”, but “on the assent of the regional health agency ” and “in the light of multiannual national objectives”. Finally, admission to the second or third year will depend on “the validation of a previous training course and (of) the success of tests”, the contents of which will be specified by decree.
Still under the control of the ministry, universities will also be able to set their own “admissions targets” in the fourth year. In addition, future externals, who will begin this fourth year in September, will take new exams for which they will have to obtain a “minimum mark”.
“Enable access to these studies from diverse avenues”
Finally, the currently existing classifying tests for entering boarding school at the end of the sixth year will also disappear. “The methods of distribution of open positions” and “assignment” of these students will also be modified by decree.
According to Agnès Buzyn, the aim of this reform is to “allow access to these studies from diversified paths”, even if “the whole process will remain demanding and selective”.. At present, about 8,200 candidates out of 60,000, or one in seven, is accepted in the second year. Emmanuel Macron himself called this system “absurd” and obsolete in the context of medical desert faced by 8.6% of French people. “Structural reforms, but which will take time, will be taken to reopen the Numerus clausus which have created this scarcity of medical personnel in the territories”, he declared in particular in July 2017.
The term Numerus clausus comes from the Latin “closed circle”. Since 1971, it has been determined by a ministerial order which sets each year the number of people admitted to the competition for the 1and year of medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry, pharmacy and maieutics.
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