I am very pleased to report another successful APMR cycle, with a total of 19 APMRs received from 18 universities across the UK.

There was a decrease in the number of students enrolled (56) and in the number obtaining awards (100) when compared with the 2018-19 academic year, as shown in the table below. Overall, numbers continue to remain lower than the peak that occurred in the 2015-16 academic year. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on student numbers, progression and awards.

There is still a good range of modules and the students continue to come from a variety of backgrounds.  We still note difficulties of increasing workload and clinical pressures, which has an effect on clinical placements for students and can affect the retention of students on programmes.

The new ‘SmartSurvey’ used for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 APMR returns seems to work well overall; however, some questions were mis-interpreted by a few Programme/Course Leads and some of the accompanying documentation was missing at the point of submission. Six APMRs were completed in the first instance; however, thirteen required amendments and/or submission of documentation. As a result, the process took approximately 14 months to complete. In order to try to streamline the process for the 2020-21 APMR, the design and content of the ‘SmartSurvey’ has been improved based on Programme/Course Lead feedback and our own views. Please see the ‘Guidance for Completion of CASE 2020-21 APMR’ narrated presentation on the CASE website for information. The impact of the changes will be evaluated as we progress through the next round of the APMR process.

Finally, I would like to thank Crispian for his valuable input to the APMR process and to Sally for working with me to create an improved version of the APMR for the 2020-21 academic year. The evaluation, analysis and synthesis of the APMRs is very much a team effort.

Gill Dolbear

CASE Education Officer

November 2021