Baroness Blackstone says mature students should be offered a fast track through medical school

* MATURE students should be offered a fast track through medical school, says the higher and further education minister Tessa Blackstone, writes Julia Hinde.

"At the pre-clinical stage and possibly at the clinical stage they might go faster," says the former master of Birkbeck College in a book published this week. "There is a lot to be learnt as a medical student but younger students of all kinds do spend a certain amount of their day devoted to play."

Baroness Blackstone is one of ten contributors to Choosing Tomorrow's Doctors, a compilation of papers from a conference last year on medical education. It is published at a time when there is talk of medicine becoming postgraduate only and being removed from universities.

Other contributors call for less emphasis on academic achievement and more on study skills when selecting medical students, and for better careers advice.

Choosing Tomorrow's Doctors is published by the Policy Studies Institute and St. George's Hospital Medical School. Pounds 9.95.