The pharmacy school table
Every week, UK pharmacy schools compete on how much exam preparation their students actually do. A school's score is the combined total of its five strongest Dose Up learners — so a big cohort is no advantage, and a small school with five committed students can top the table.
How the scoring works
Learners earn points for the work they do: one point for answering a question, one more for getting it right, and a half point per question for sitting a mock paper — paid whatever the mark, because sitting a paper is the single most useful thing a candidate does and the one they are most likely to put off. There is a daily ceiling, so nobody can climb by clicking quickly.
Only a school's five highest scorers count towards its position. It is how cross-country running solves the same problem, and it means a school is measured on depth rather than on how many people it happens to have signed up.
What these students are preparing for
Two assessments sit between a pharmacy student and the register. The GPhC Registration Assessment is the final qualifying exam, sat at the end of the foundation training year: two papers, 120 questions, covering calculations and clinical decision-making under time pressure. The Oriel trainee pharmacist recruitment assessment comes earlier and decides where a student trains — a situational judgement paper and a numeracy paper, scored against the NHS England Professional Attributes Framework, with the SJT score determining a candidate's national rank.
Is your school not on the table?
A school appears once three of its learners are scoring, and is ranked on its best five. If yours is missing, it means nobody there has started yet — which makes it a good week to be the one who does.