This initiative has a focus on ensuring that the regulator’s threshold requirements for registration reflect the evolving roles of optometrists. It could also signal new models of qualification. 

The Education Strategic Review (ESR), currently being undertaken by the GOC, aims to ensure that education programmes and qualifications leading to GOC registration equip future optometrists to meet changing patient needs and professional roles. The ESR is also timed to respond to long-term challenges and opportunities within the sector. These include a growing, ageing population, with patients presenting with increasingly complex needs, and advances in technology and new models of care.

A key goal of the review is to develop and implement new education standards and outcomes that are less prescriptive than the GOC’s existing approach, but which more clearly capture the professional capabilities required for contemporary optical practice. The GOC is also keen to explore how exposure to clinical environments can be integrated into optometry pre-registration education from an earlier stage, and how one organisation is accountable for each complete educational route to registration – rather than responsibility being split between different organisations, as is the case for most routes currently. However, the GOC has not been prescriptive about the model of education that should prevail. Its indications are that routes to registration could become more diverse, providing it is evident that each route fully adheres to its new standards and outcomes. 

The College is continuing to feed into the review process and is pursuing several key issues with the GOC that it believes must be addressed for the ESR to achieve its intended goals safely and effectively. The College’s key focus is to ensure that high education and professional standards are maintained. Questions to address and resolve through developmental activity include the following: 

1. How does optical education and training need to evolve to prepare students for changing professional practice, and to meet changing patient needs?
2. How can the GOC principle of a ‘single point of accountability’ for each educational route to registration be met, and by which type of organisations?
3. At what level should GOC threshold requirements for registration be set to ensure newly-qualified optometrists are able to meet changing practice and patient needs?
4. How can and should practice-based learning be more strongly integrated into university programmes, so that it is appropriately underpinned by academic study and to ensure safety for all parties?
5. How can innovation and flexibility in education provision be encouraged while existing good practice is maintained and all routes to registration are sustained by sufficient funding to maintain high quality and standards?