Chris Bennett: Education needs to focus on quality

Anyone who has A-level age kids will be aware of the sea change taking place in tertiary education so it’s good to see optometry courses remaining popular.

There is always the fear that greater volume means lower quality, so it is vital optometry evolves to meet its own changing market needs and maintains its credentials as a profession that is reassuringly difficult to enter.

Along with university education in general optometry has seen a rapid expansion in numbers. In the past three decades the UK has gone from having a couple of dozen world-class universities to having over 130 universities which close on half of eligible young people attend.