Education Policy Officer

Do you have an interest in contributing to policy development, have excellent communication skills and an ability to develop innovative, evidence-based solutions? We currently have four opportunities for policy officers to join the Education Policy team:

2 Permanent, 1 fixed-term until December 2027, 1 fixed term until December 2025

About the role

Policy officers are responsible for supporting the development of creative, proportionate, pragmatic and evidence-based policy, processes and guidance to deliver the GMC’s policy programme. Working closely with policy, strategy, project and operational colleagues and teams across the GMC and with external stakeholders, policy officers play an integral part in contributing to delivering the GMC’s business plan and corporate strategy. 

This is an exciting time to join the Education Policy team as we take forward  one of the GMC’s top priorities - an ambitious programme of work to reform and review our education framework of standards, outcomes and guidance to ensure that it remains current and reflects the needs of the UK public. This work is focussing on three main areas:

• creating more, increasingly diverse, better supported educators, supervisors, trainers and mentors
• responding to wider national ambitions for increases in medical school capacity and innovation, whilst maintaining standards
• supporting career development and lifelong learning for all doctors.

You’ll be involved in driving forward this programme of work, supporting significant policy development and engagement with organisations in the medical education sector across the four UK countries. You’ll also support the usual policy activity of providing briefings, policy advice, and responding to queries, across the wider education policy portfolio, as well as team development.

You can find more detail on the tasks you will undertake, and the essential skills required for the role, in the job pack attached to the vacancy.

Full time (35 hours Monday to Friday), we are happy to consider a range of flexible working. Flexible working requests will be considered in line with the policy.

This is a hybrid role between home working and office working, you’ll work 1 day a week in the London or Manchester office, or more if you prefer. We may ask you to attend the office on additional days where necessary, for example team meetings.

How to apply

If you are interested in applying for this role, please submit a CV and a separate supporting statement, which demonstrates your reason for applying and a summary of how you can meet the essential skills listed in the job description, provide examples where possible. Please note, applications submitted without a CV and supporting statement will be considered incomplete and not shortlisted. Interviews and assessments will take place the week commencing 30 June 2025.

We will assess the information you provide against the essential skills required for the role and let you know whether you will progress to the next stage of the recruitment process.

Candidate Pool

We often look to create a pool of appointable Policy Officer talent so that we can recruit to future roles quickly to meet the GMC's policy business needs. If you meet the standard for the appointment, but you are not offered a role in the first instance, you will join the policy officer pool for six months. If further roles become available, we will use the appointable pool from this campaign if applicable. Please note that permanent positions will be offered to the highest-scoring candidates, followed by fixed-term positions, in order of score, above the interview cut-off mark.

GMC Benefits – Why work for us

We work with doctors, physician associates (PAs), anaesthesia associates (AAs), those they care for and other stakeholders to support good, safe patient care across the UK. We set the standards doctors, PAs, AAs and their educators need to meet, and help them achieve them. If there are concerns these standards may not be met or that public confidence in doctors, PAs, or AAs may be at risk, we can investigate, and take action if needed.

You’ll benefit from being part of an organisation that is genuinely committed to its people with several excellent benefits including:

• 30 days holiday with the option to buy and sell more
• A generous employer pension contribution of 15%
• Access to a range of learning and development opportunities designed to support your ongoing progression
• Flexible working patterns
• Attractive salary that’s reviewed annually
• Discounts at 100s of high street and online stores
• Discounted gym membership
• Private medical insurance
• Employee assistance programme
• Cycle to work scheme for those wanting a greener commute
• Bike lockers and shower facilities

The GMC values diversity and has made a public commitment to processes and procedures that are fair, objective, transparent and free from discrimination.

We are also committed to the Disability Confident employer scheme and support the requirements of the Disability Confident interview scheme. If you have a disability and meet the cut-off mark for the essential criteria for this role as outlined in the person specification document, you will be offered an interview.

We believe that providing an inclusive, supportive and caring working environment as an employer is just as important as it is in healthcare settings – our working environment is inclusive and caring, with wellbeing at the front and centre of our approach and you can read more about this here.

The GMC is a charity registered in England and Wales (1089278) and Scotland (SC037750)