Northern Ireland

UK government lifts student caps on teaching and medicine degrees

Many more students have been successful in meeting the required grades for already oversubscribed courses
Many more students have been successful in meeting the required grades for already oversubscribed courses Many more students have been successful in meeting the required grades for already oversubscribed courses

CAPS on medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and teacher training degrees have been lifted by the British government.

The temporary arrangement in England aims to ease pressure on universities.

The A-level grading u-turn has led to thousands of students receiving significantly better results.

Revised results in Northern Ireland - after a controversial algorithm was scrapped - show 43 per cent of A-levels awarded A*-A grades, compared to about 30 last year.

This means many more students have been successful in meeting the required grades for already oversubscribed courses.

The latest changes apply to degrees in England only but the Stormont executive is also under pressure to lift caps and create more student places.

Queen's University Belfast has 236 medicine places for domestic students. It said it was awaiting confirmation if that was to be raised.

It said some students had offers withdrawn based on their original A-level results last week only to have them reinstated when teacher predictions were honoured.

"The university is committed to showing as much flexibility as possible to maximise the number of applicants able to access higher education in what has been a very challenging year," a Queen's spokeswoman said.

"However, until we have greater clarity on which students have now met the conditions of their offer for each course, it is not possible to confirm places for entry in the forthcoming year due to capacity restrictions and whether it may be subsequently necessary to offer deferred entry for some students."