The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) Education Committee yesterday [Tuesday 25 November 2025] decided to grant conditional accreditation for a further year to the veterinary degree offered by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, to allow for further improvements to be made to meet accreditation standards.
In November 2024, the RCVS Education Committee agreed to grant the veterinary degree conditional accreditation following an accreditation visitation earlier that year that found wide-ranging deficiencies with the degree meant it only met 27 of the 77 RCVS accreditation standards. Some 55 recommendations for improvement were made by the visitation panel.
A subsequent accreditation visitation was planned and took place in September 2025. This visitation found that, while there remained a significant number of standards still to be met, many of the recommendations for improvement had either been achieved, or significant progress had been made towards them being met.
Therefore, the Education Committee decided to grant the programme conditional accreditation for one year, with an action plan and timetable being put into place to guide how and when the 20 outstanding recommendations would be met.
The next accreditation visit to Cambridge will take place in October 2026. It was agreed that this timeframe and accreditation status would ensure that progress towards meeting accreditation standards continued at pace, allowing the Department to demonstrate its commitment to student wellbeing and support for learning across the entirety of the veterinary programme.
An RCVS spokesperson said: “We appreciate the considerable efforts and hard work that the staff team within the veterinary department at Cambridge University have put into rectifying many of the issues identified in the 2024 accreditation event, for taking on board the constructive advice that was given and working together to make many of the necessary improvements.
“However, as the report shows, there are still several outstanding areas of concern, and so the Education Committee agreed that it was not yet in a position to grant Cambridge’s veterinary degree full accreditation.
“We have collaborated with Cambridge on putting together an action plan and timeline for meeting the 20 remaining recommendations and we hope that it will continue on its current trajectory towards meeting the RCVS accreditation standards.”
The list of recommendations, suggestions and commendations for the Department following the visit in September 2025 are available to read in the full report to the Education Committee.
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