Following a meeting of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Education Committee last week (Tuesday 19 November 2024), the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine has been notified that it must demonstrate improvements to its veterinary degree programme by September 2025, following an RCVS accreditation visit earlier this year that identified wide-ranging concerns.
The veterinary school was given “conditional accreditation” for its degree, as it had met only 27 of the 77 RCVS accreditation standards.
The visitation was conducted by an accreditation panel comprising representatives from veterinary academia and clinical practice, as well as student and international representatives. As part of the accreditation process, the panel considered a wide range of evidence including documents and records submitted in relation to the standards, discussions and interviews with students and faculty members, a tour of the teaching facilities, and meetings with other key stakeholders.
Based on the evidence, the panel agreed 55 recommendations for improvement which were then discussed, alongside the formal response from the Department, in September this year, by the RCVS Primary Qualifications Subcommittee (PQSC), the body responsible for considering accreditation reports and making recommendations to Education Committee.
Due to the unusually high number of recommendations and concerns about the delivery of the Cambridge degree, PQSC recommended that the degree programme receive conditional accreditation for 10 months, which was then agreed by Education Committee.
Summarising the views of the Education Committee, an RCVS spokesperson said: “Following careful review of the evidence, during the Committee’s detailed discussions, it was unanimously agreed that the number of standards not currently being met, which extended across all domains, meant that the Committee made the difficult decision to grant conditional accreditation.
“The Committee thanked those panel members who took part in the visitation for the careful and robust way in which they considered the evidence against the standards and what they heard and observed during the visitation process, and for their candour in identifying the problems they found and providing the recommendations to set them right. It also thanked members of PQSC for their careful and comprehensive discussions around the issues.
“In reaching a decision and timeframe, given the problems identified, and the impact these will have on student learning and experience, Education Committee members firmly agreed on the need to help the vet school support both existing students on, and future applicants to, the Cambridge veterinary programme.”
The spokesperson continued: “At the next visitation in September 2025, a panel will consider the evidence submitted and then a decision will be made on the future status of the degree.”
“In the meantime, we recognise that both students and staff might have concerns about this outcome, so we remain able and very willing to work closely with the Department in the coming weeks to ensure it has appropriate support plans in place.”
The full list of recommendations, suggestions and commendations for Cambridge following the visit in May 2024 can be found on our accreditation visitations webpage at on the RCVS website.
