Quality assurance of dental education

We are committed to ensuring our quality assurance of dental education and training fulfils our primary purpose, to protect patients. How we run our inspections and how we judge whether a programme is sufficient for GDC registration can be found in this document:  Inspection Process for Providers.

Standards for Education

We have a set of Standards for Education that we expect programmes that lead to registration to demonstrate. These Standards for education are the framework of our processes and can be found in the following document. Revisions to these have been agreed by Council. Please see updated Standards.  Programmes are quality assured against this revised document.

We use the Standards to look at whether a programme produces students who demonstrate a particular range of learning outcomes when they have completed their programme of studies.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for each of the professions that we register are contained in the document  Preparing for Practice. 

Please note that education providers will be required to transition their programmes from Preparing for Practice to The Safe Practitioner: A framework of behaviours and learning outcomes for dental professional education from September 2025. For further information, please contact the Education Quality Assurance team.

Standards for Specialty Education

Since 2019, the GDC has been quality assuring specialty training against the Standards for Specialty Education. Please refer to our Specialty Education and Training page for further details.