To whom It May concern,

Honorable Sir/Madam,

We would like to draw your attention to some of the unfair things in the current system of evaluation  that are impacting International graduates in the dentistry emotionally and financially.  Most of us are stressed and depressed.

 Most of us are currently either the PRs or the citizens going through this process of getting recognized by Australian Dental council to be able to practice in Australia. However due to the way the exam process is handled currently we are all under tremendous amount of stress which is making our day to day life very difficult for ourselves and our families.

We all have finished 5 years of Bachelor in Dentistry course overseas and have lot of experience too.

We all have to go through the examination process conducted by  ADC which can be briefly summarized as

1. Initial assessment:  Where our degree is assessed to decide whether we qualify to give exams

2.  Theory exam: It is conducted twice a year worldwide.  But, unlike Australian medical council, the dental council theory exam comes with the validity of only 3 years.

3.  Clinical exam in the simulated environment, which is, conducted over 4-5 venues across Australia usually twice a year.

In the below mail, we have tried to outline few of our concerns to your notice as best as we could so that something can be done with regard to those problem areas.

 1.    Validity and lack of enough opportunity  to take exam:  Till 2014, the exam was run almost every month or two across couple of venues and around 50 to 70 candidates used to get a chance at each venue to appear for exam and the candidates who are unsuccessful in only few components used to get a chance to appear for those failed components only.  ADC decided to introduce new system from June 2014.  So there was a huge pile up of candidates who have been unsuccessful in the previous attempts.  In the November exam, there was some issues with the exam and the candidates who failed (almost 80%) were granted a free exam in June 2015 and November 2015.  That means many were unable to book as most of the seats were filled already.  An additional exam was held in Feb 2015 to accommodate but it wasn’t sufficient to clear the backlog.  Due to the decline in the pass percentage and the newly entering candidates into the stream from theory exam, there has been a tremendous increase in the candidates waiting to appear for the practical exam.  To make the matters worse, the English Language requirement was removed suddenly and the theory examination venues were increased.  When the candidates booked November 2015 exam, the ADC site crashed due to everyone logging into secure a seat.  Then ADC made a sudden announcement of cancelling everyone’s booking and giving preference to the new candidates.  Now the 2013 candidates had their validity expiring and they requested ADC about what to do with the condition.  ADC gave few a chance in 2016 June exam.

Now the question here is why ADC keeps introducing new things suddenly?

·  It keeps candidates anxious most of the times because of this unexpected things happening

·  When English language requirement was working as a filter in controlling the number of candidates entering the stream, why was it removed?

·  When other parallel health science streams like Australian medical council doesn’t have validity over the theory exams, why is it imposed by only Australian Dental council.

And when dentistry is removed from the SOL list and statistics predict that there is surplus amount of dentists why did ADC increase the venues for theory exams???

2.    Cost factor:  The exam costs 4500 dollars for clinical exams and 2000 dollars for the theory exam as the exam fees.  In addition to this, every candidate has to bear the additional expense of accommodation, food, and travel for exam. Since the exam is conducted on the simulated environment, we need to practice at home with the home set up similar to the exam one which burns candidates pocket dearly. Since we are are not readily accepted for any other jobs here, bearing this expenses on top of the unemployment takes a huge burden on our life leading to emotional stress for self and families.  The things we use for the practice are the one which a working dentist would use on his/her real patients.  Minimum amount spent for preparing the adc exam is almost 30,000-50,000 AUD.

3. Inconsistent manner of conducting exam:

The exam is conducted over different venues. Assessment criteria for all the venues are the same.  However, there are different set of instructions, equipment and policies followed during the exam which means the environment in which the candidates perform does differ significantly.  This can easily lead to discrepancies in  performances.

The models are transported to Melbourne for assessment.  During the transport, there is a high chance that there can be damages and mismanagement of the models. So isn’t it a better to provide the onsite evaluation.

We request ADC to provide us with the copy of our adverse event report form with the report from the convenor. Please provide us with the copy of preexisting injury report form.  We request for the record of the tasks.

4.    Lack of feedback system:  The exam results are announced without the feedback. So the candidates don’t have any idea regarding what went wrong.  After spending so much of time, energy and money and sidelining family life, what we get is just the grades without any explanation.  Unless we know what is wrong, attempting another exam is liking shooting in darkness.  There are many candidates who have got different grades at different exams for the same tasks.  The candidates who have failed have no answer why it has happened and those who have passed are also clueless about how it happened.  Especially it is frustrating when some candidates posting on the social forums about how they did wrong things and still managed to pass.

 5.    Exploitation of the ADC exam candidates by the businesses:  There are lots of businesses which has mushroomed suddenly promising the desperate candidates of high pass rate and materials.  All these courses and material providers are overcharging candidates and making heaps of money.  We would be happy if ADC would ask us to do a course with university in the failed components.  Also ADC can allow those who are happy to go through an years of university program to willing candidates by giving seat in dental colleges.

6.   Time factor:  With such a slim chance of getting a chance to appear for clinical exam and the validity of theory exam in addition to low pass percentage, lot of time is lost as unproductive.  This further adds lots of stress for us and our families and creates depressive environment at home.  Also, this unproductive period is very difficult to explain when seeking jobs.

7.   Review system for results:  The current review and appeal system costs the candidate a whooping 5000 dollars which is much more than the exam costs.  Also, we would like the review system to be transparent where candidate can be present at the time of review.

 

Now to summarise our reasonable demands are:

1.   Remove the validity of theory exam.

2.   Increase the frequency of practical exams from 2017 itself. Wasting one more year just doing nothing is not fair.

3.   Provide us with the detailed feedback of our exam.

4.   Provide the consistent exam conduction across all the venues so that everyone feels benefitted the same.

5.   Since dentistry has been removed from the SOL list, if ADC wants to control the influx of the candidates, they can stop the process of initial assessment and theory exams till the current candidates can be managed or only allowing the candidates with PR or citizenship to appear for theory exam.  This is just a suggestion.

6.   Please make the review of the result affordable and transparent.

 Thank you for listening to our concerns.  Hope you will help us to get a solution to our issues in a fair manner.  All we are asking is fair system not the easy or lenient system.

Thanks Again.

ADC candidates