Peter Moore: I failed the eleven-plus – but it didn’t make me a worse doctor

I was recently talking to a colleague, a fellow student at my medical school in the 1970s. He was a hospital consultant but has now retired. It turned out that we have something else in common.

We both failed the eleven-plus and both had mediocre A Levels. But this was not the only surprise. He pointed out that, in our year, there were a substantial number of us eleven-plus failures, more, he suspected, than by pure chance. 

The Dean in charge of admissions at the time was only in post for a year and our year was a little different. Did he have a preference for us failures? No other medical school seemed interested. 

If it was deliberate, it was also successful. I am not qualified to judge my own career except to point out that I spent thirty years as a GP and worked for forty years in the NHS without being struck off, so at least I must have proved value for money. Others were very successful with numerous consultants and a few professors. 

This opens up a range of questions. Is there anything that us eleven plus failures can offer that those who went straight through to brilliant A levels cannot?  Does someone who stuck to their ambition to become a doctor against all the odds show tenacity? We knew that we were very lucky to get in and so took nothing for granted. 

Does it make the potential doctor less arrogant, realising that they do not have a vastly superior intellect than their patients? Does it mean that we have mixed with a wider range of people when at school? 

Should medical schools look a bit wider than just A Level results when selecting potential doctors? Today none of us would have had a look in but the world has also changed. Most of the country do not take the eleven-plus. Areas like Torbay which still have the exam have some excellent comprehensive schools for those who do not go to grammar school. 

Today only the top grades will get a place at medical school but is this a good way to select students when one in three qualified doctors plan to leave the NHS within two years of qualifying. Many of these doctors plan to work abroad but some leave the profession.

Some are concerned about the work life balance or the working conditions. I have also seen doctors who, having qualified, hate the job. Some were encouraged by their family because of the status, being called “doctor. There is no other job where you change your name after qualifying.  But there are other factors. 

Although resident doctors work less hours than I did in the 1970s the job has changed. Two years after qualifying doctors choose a speciality which means applying for a training programme. We had a three-year GP training programme but it was far more flexible. Doctors could find their own jobs to gain experience rather than a formal rotation. 

Today the training programmes are competitive but, even if successful, the programmes can be rigid. Doctors who may be married with a family might have to work at other hospitals which could be miles away. Time off is difficult to plan in advance. In one case a woman was told that they could not guarantee time off for her wedding in a years’ time. This is not the way to maintain morale. 

The number of us eleven-plus failures may be coincidence but any failure can end up being positive. Most medical breakthroughs follow years of hard work and failure. Outside medicine many people such as Walt Disney or James Dyson took years to become successful. Martin Luther King was awarded a C in public speaking; Michael Jordan did not make it into his university basketball team. Twelve publishers turned down J K Rowling’s first Harry Potter book and Steven Spielberg was rejected three times by a film school. 

Selecting potential doctors is difficult but perhaps medical school admissions should look wider than just brilliant A Levels. Failure can be the first step to success, although, as an eleven-plus failure, I am biased.