NHS England said the review, which runs to June 2025, will look at how to make the training the ‘best in the world’ and cover placement options, the flexibility of training, difficulties with rotas, control and autonomy in training, and the balance between developing specialist knowledge and gaining a broad range of skills. NHS England said the engagement programme will include national listening events, focus groups and roundtables, regional engagement events and a call for evidence.
RCPCH has engaged with the review and in May 2025 submitted a response to the call for evidence. You can download our response below.
Our data shows that there is a 20% deficit in the number of resident paediatric doctors on shifts, and they are increasingly overworked and burned out. Meanwhile, this year applications from doctors to join the paediatric training pathway skyrocketed. These are highly skilled, very talented individuals, many of whom had to be turned down due to there not being enough training places – a figure set by NHS England which does not consider the current needs of children and young people, who make up 25% of NHS patients. An overstretched service will always struggle to provide good quality training.
We wait for further indication of the intentions of this review. We have seen reviews of training historically in the NHS, where saving costs rather than improving training appears to have been the driving ethos.
Our response covers the following principles which we hope the final review will address:
- Good training arises from a strong workforce. This review needs to not repeat the issues of past national projects, and ensure that children and young people and the workforce that supports them, are not lost in considerations for adult medicine.
- Listening to doctors in training and doctors who train. If this is a true listening exercise, we expect NHS England to come to this without its mind already made up about what the solutions must be. Royal Colleges and Faculties, as member organisations, are well-placed to bring together the experiences of the doctors who experience the realities of training in the NHS.
- Good training requires time to train. Trainers are increasingly given less and less time to be able to train their new colleagues, with SPA time under threat. Training, examining, and educating all make training the future NHS service possible and should not been seen as system luxuries. Similarly, study leave allows doctors to learn, improve and diversify their knowledge.
- Good training comes alongside a good career. With ever increasing competition ratios and uncertain consultant job prospects, the stresses of training are only increased.
- Consider the areas that take time away from being a doctor. As well as the large system issues covered above, training experiences are limited by lots of small system failures. Payroll delays, tax code errors, late arriving rotas, no lockers, no access to hot food during long shifts; and variations in how different hospitals and deaneries provide support for doctors in training.
- Make its driving ethos to provide safe and high quality training. NHS training has a global reputation of good standing and this review must protect that into the future, for the sake of all patients.
To ensure we reach the Government’s ambition to ensure the healthiest generation of children ever, we need a workforce to support them. This requires a whole system approach to workforce planning with a sustainable long-term child health workforce plan. It must cover the wide remit of training, retention, lifelong careers and tackle increasing burnout.
In addition to the above response, our Children and Young People's Engagement programme, RCPCH &Us, took part in a series of engagement sessions to enable children and young people to engage with the call for evidence questions.
Over 500 children and young people from across England, representing different ages, locations, health experiences and backgrounds, took part in the consultation and shared their hopes for the future of post graduate training. RCPCH &Us engaged with the review and in May 2025 submitted a response to the call for evidence. You can download the response from children and young people below.
This page was first published on 21 February 2025 to note the launch of the review.