In a time of significant staff shortages – 10,00 doctors and 5,000 GPs – the UK workforce is crying out for doctors with the skills and experience to make a difference to the lives of patients and their families around the country.
RefuAid works with hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers to give them the language skills and the professional training they need to enter the labour market. They mentor a number of doctors who are ready to work but need the IELTS or OET English language qualification to register with the GMC. These are high level, high stakes tests and require specialist training to pass with the grades specified.
RefuAid approached SLC to see if we could help and we jumped at the opportunity. We already work with groups of Syrian refugees with lower language levels and we clearly see how lives can be transformed once learners have the language skills and the confidence to enter the UK workforce.
SLC’s online classrooms and online test preparation materials enable us to work with students wherever they are. This means we can work with groups of refugee doctors who may be joining a classroom from very different parts of the UK.
We also work extensively with overseas doctors around the world who need IELTS or OET to work in the UK. We understand the challenges doctors face in terms of learning the language they need as well as the exam strategies and techniques required to excel in the test.
Our experience working with international doctors and GPs looking to move to the UK and support our health service gives us the experience and expertise to work with RefuAid. We are hugely looking forward to working with the doctors and getting them registered so they can work here and use their skills and experience to make a difference to the lives of hundreds of patients and their families. Chris Moore, Managing Director, SLC.
The first course started this month and two more are scheduled to commence soon. We will update you as results come in.
About RefuAid
Founded in 2015 in response to the refugee crisis, RefuAid is a small charitable organisation which supports UK-based refugees into higher education or employment. A huge proportion of the refugees they work with were practicing professionals or were on track to pursuing higher education. Many have been prevented from gaining re-accreditation in the UK by prohibitive fees for the exams and language qualifications they require to work here. As a result, most people end up in 'survival' jobs in the service industry, where they are exploited and severely underemployed, or are unable to find work at all.
RefuAid tries to combat this by supporting refugees back into higher education and employment. They run a UK Language Scholarship program to support their clients to take formal English language exams (IELTS, OET, CAE) and also offer an interest-free loan of up to £10,000 for refugees who require funds to cover the cost of requalification and/or UK accreditation in order to work in their previous profession in the UK.
About SLC
Specialist Language Courses (SLC) is the UK’s leading provider of online Test Preparation and Medical English language training courses to the global healthcare sector.
Our courses enable thousands of medical professionals and students to work, travel, study, research, develop themselves, and communicate with each other in English, the lingua franca of medicine.
All courses are designed for classroom use and self-study. They are used by medical schools, nursing colleges, English language schools, exam test centres, healthcare recruitment companies and individuals around the world to support their learners, candidates, teachers and course designers.
For more information
Language Training for Refugees
IELTS Preparation for Individuals
Contact us if you would like to find out more about the courses.