Which Foundation school has the happiest trainees?

In this article, we’ll break down the data from Messly’s Training Navigator to answer the question: Which Foundation school has the happiest trainees?

Below you'll find a chart breaking down each Foundation School with a score out of 100, which represents an average Overall Score for that Foundation School.

You can read more about this in the Methodology below.

‍

What is the Training Navigator?

Rank your Foundation Programme rotations with confidence with Messly’s Training Navigator. See how rotations are rated by last year’s foundation trainees to make smarter decisions about where you’ll spend your Foundation Training.

You can use it to answer questions like:

👉 Which are the best-rated and worst-rated rotations in my Foundation School?

👉 How do the rotations compare for Workload, Learning and Satisfaction?

👉 Which is the best hospital for my favourite specialties?

👉 Within a hospital, which rotations are best-rated?

Insights

We’ve broken down the average Overall Scores for each Foundation School, from our Training Navigator, so that you can easily see which have the happiest and least happy Foundation Trainees on average.

😃 Which Foundation school has the happiest trainees?

The Foundation Schools with the happiest trainees are Severn, Peninsula and Northern with scores of 69, 67 and 67 respectively. Interestingly, Northern also features as one of the Foundation School with the most manageable workload, which you can read more about here.

The national average Satisfaction Score across all Foundation Scores was 62 in 2021.

😡 Which Foundation school has the least happy trainees?

The Foundation Schools with the least happy trainees are North Yorkshire and East Coast, EBH and Wessex with scores of 55, 56 and 57 respectively. Similarly to Northern having the most manageable workload, the inverse is also true here. Wessex also features as the Foundation School with the least manageable workload, and similar trends can be seen with most of the Foundation Schools featuring in the bottom 3rd on the above chart.

As you might expect, the Foundation Schools with the least satisfied trainees tend to be less competitive. North Yorkshire and East Coast, EBH and Wessex all have Competition Ratios of less than 1 in 2021, meaning that that they had fewer applicants than places. To see an analysis of Competition Ratios, see our article here.

In addition to looking between Foundation Schools, there are also strong correlations in Foundation Trainee workload and overall satisfaction between specialties. Check out: Which Foundation Training specialties work you the hardest? and Which specialty has the happiest Foundation Trainees?

Data and Methodology

The above data is based on an analysis of Overall Scores from the Training Navigator.

Overall Scores are calculated based on the feedback provided by trainees when asked about their workload, learning experience and overall satisfaction in the survey.

Only specialties that featured more than 12 rotations in the Training Navigator in 2021 were included in this analysis. Additionally, for a rotation to count and be included in our Training Navigator, they must have a minimum of 3 trainees who completed the GMC’s 2021 NTS.

The Training Navigator also breaks down a Learning Score (based on experience, clinical supervision, curriculum coverage and others) and a Satisfaction Score (based on overall satisfaction and support) for each rotation, plus and Overall Score that combines all of the above. Check out our Training Navigator to see review these in detail.

To learn more about our Training Navigator’s methodology, check out this link.

‍