Operational Activities

The Medical ACT Allocation Model in current use has been in place since the last major review in 2014, which also saw the implementation of the Measurement of Teaching (MoT) project, designed to track teaching activity within the Boards. Since then, the Medical ACT budget has increased substantially reflecting a number of changes to medical education in Scotland, including the commissioning of new medical undergraduate programmes, increases in student numbers within existing medical programmes and targeted support in line with Scottish Government policy directives to widen access to medical careers and provide more undergraduate medical education in primary care settings.

As the processes supporting the distribution of Medical ACT became increasingly complex and governance processes around the use of the funding changed over time as the quantum of funding has increased, it was felt necessary to review the structure and processes of Medical ACT.

Due to COVID-19 delays this exercise entailed over 2 years’ work involving 11 internal and 51 external stakeholders across three related short life working groups that engaged in 14 meetings; the NES team is grateful to all those who engaged in this exercise with them. We are in the process of developing a document which covers the “rules of engagement” for use of Medical ACT funding up until end of financial year 2023-24; however publication of this information is not in itself the end of the process, it is merely defining, we trust clearly, where we are  at the beginning of the next phase of evolution and development of our system for managing the distribution of Medical ACT.