Best Foreign Medical Schools

Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 July 2008 16.20 BST

A straight A-grade student who was told he couldn’t become a doctor because of his spent criminal conviction has been offered an interview at a top medical school.

The University of Manchester’s medical school today told Majid Ahmed, 18, he would be interviewed for a place to study there this September.

Ahmed, from Little Horton in Bradford, lost an appeal against Imperial College London’s medical school, which refused him a place on its medicine degree after considering his conviction.

Ahmed was convicted of burglary in 2005 and ordered to serve a four-month referral order for community service. His conviction is now spent and he has since moved schools, volunteered with disability charities and obtained four A grades at A-level in an attempt to train as a doctor.

The General Medical Council has confirmed that people can still become doctors if they have a criminal record. A candidate could be barred if they were thought to pose a risk, but evidence including references would be considered.

The University of Manchester also initially rejected Ahmed. Confidental memos, obtained by Ahmed under the Freedom of Information Act, show Manchester’s academics viewed his conviction as a factor in deciding whether to offer him a place.

Publicly, the university said Ahmed had been rejected on purely academic grounds and that they had been concerned that he had spent his gap year in educational rather than medical settings.

Ahmed appealed against Manchester’s rejection. He said he was delighted to find out the university had changed its mind.

The minister for innovation, universities and skills, Bill Rammell, was one of many who criticised Imperial for withdrawing its offer to Ahmed, who is from one of the poorest parts of England.

Rammell said: “Universities should be open to people like Ahmed, who has a spent conviction, but has put his life together and done everything that society would ask of him.

“Universities should not turn away talented individuals who have successfully rehabilitated, when their convictions are spent or when they have made positive steps to change their lives and improve their futures.”

Rammell’s department had spoken to Imperial in March when Ahmed’s MP, Terry Rooney, had written to Rammell.

Phil Willis, chair of the Commons select committee responsible for universities, said Imperial’s decision was “against all natural justice”. He said: “You cannot have a university saying someone with a spent conviction has to suffer for life.”

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of the crime reduction charity Nacro, said Imperial’s withdrawal of its offer was “discriminatory”.

Imperial said it had withdrawn the offer to uphold trust in the medical profession and would not reconsider its decision.

The university had initially offered Ahmed a place to study this academic year, but when Ahmed wrote to admissions tutors to inform them of his spent conviction, they withdrew the offer.

Ahmed had not put his spent conviction on his Ucas university application form. He says he was advised that he did not have to. For most subjects, this is the case. But for medicine, a conviction is never spent.

Medical schools run Criminal Records Bureau checks on all their applicants and Ahmed’s conviction would have come up. Imperial called Ahmed for a “fitness to practise” interview, where a panel of medical and non-medical experts decide whether to allow an applicant with special circumstances to train as a doctor. He failed this interview.

Manchester confirmed it would be interviewing Ahmed. It refused to make any further comment.