During Year 5, students face the last assessments of their undergraduate career. This is part of the continual assessment and appraisal of progress that is part of any professional career and should not be seen as a particularly difficult hurdle.

The aims of these assessments are to:

• Ensure the level of factual knowledge continues to increase.
• Check clinical skills are adequate for the needs of a Foundation Programme Year 1 doctor.
• Prepare for the assessment processes of Foundation Programmes.
• Check students can integrate and apply knowledge and demonstrate decision-making skills.
• Monitor the ability to consider the patient in a wide context to ensure students can behave in a way consistent with the expected professional attitudes of a doctor.

This will be done in a variety of ways:

• Formative Progress Test (January) – The results of this is for student feedback purposes only and will not inform any progression decisions.
• Finals / Finals Resit – Fulfilling the requirements of the Medical Licensing Assessment:
  • The national Applied Knowledge Test (Single Best Answer written papers).
  • Clinical Competency Assessment (CCA) to assess clinical skills.
• Passing the Prescribing Safety Assessment – from academic year 25-26 onwards, passing the PSA forms part of the degree requirements.
• Satisfactory completion of clinical placements including UPSAs.
• Written reports from Quality and Evidence Personal Excellence Path (QEPEP).

The AKT and the CCA form the two components of the UK Medical Licensing Assessment. These will be taken during ‘Finals’ in March. If a student fails one or both of these components, they must resit that component(s) again during Finals Resit in May.

If a student is repeating Year 5, they must retake all assessments again, including MLA components (AKT & CPSA) even if these have been previously passed. The exception to this is the PSA, which does not need to be repeated within a repeat year if this has been passed within the last academic year.

Further Information on the MLA, PSA & Number of Attempts:

Students are permitted to have up to four valid attempts of MLA assessments. Both the AKT and CCA must be passed within the same academic year. Students who have not achieved a pass in both assessments within the four valid attempt allowance will be excluded from the Programme even if there are remaining valid attempts for one of the components.

All attempts are valid and count towards the maximum number of four permitted attempts, unless an attempt is nullified by the school as a consequence of:
–  accepted mitigating circumstances or
– a successful appeal

In relation to the AKT: where a student sits the first paper and is unable to sit the second paper, for any reason, the student will be deemed to have failed that attempt of the AKT. However, that attempt may be voided if the reason they did not sit the second paper is accepted by the Mitigating Circumstances Panel.

Students can submit if needed mitigating circumstances for all Y5 assessments except for the PSA given national delivery of these exams. However, we will allow students 4 attempts of the PSA (no more than 2 sittings in an academic year).

Other Year 5 Assessments including QEPEP and Clinical Placements still follow a maximum of two permitted attempts. Therefore a further Unsatisfactory outcome at second attempt in either of these assessments will result in exclusion from the Programme, regardless of the number of valid attempts remaining of the MLA components.

As a general principle, whilst the number of attempts differ across the different Y5 assessments, exhaustion of attempts for any one component will result in exclusion even if there are attempts remaining of other components.