The Leeds Dentistry course

Leeds picks the teaching format to suit the topic. Core knowledge comes through large-group lectures, plus some live and pre-recorded online lectures. Smaller seminars and tutorials give you time to discuss and apply what you have learned. Each module has its own area on Minerva, the University's online learning platform, with lecture slides, discussions and messages from staff and other students.

The balance shifts sharply over five years. Dental and Biomedical Science takes 60 of your 120 credits in Year 1, then 40 in Year 2 and 20 in Years 3 and 4, and has no separate module in Year 5. Clinical Skills and Practice moves the other way, from 20 credits in Year 1 to 60 in Years 3 and 4 and 100 in Year 5. Personal and Professional Development stays at 20 credits every year.

Clinical skills are built in a fixed order: simulation first, then real patients. At key stages you must pass gateway assessments, practical tests on the simulators or phantom heads, before you can carry out that work on patients. On clinic you are supervised by GDC-registered clinicians, with at most one supervisor to six students. Dental nurses run the clinics and check infection control, and students told the GDC they found working with them especially useful.

The module catalogue gives the timetabled hours for Years 1 and 2. Across Year 1 the four modules add up to about 295 hours of scheduled teaching. That is roughly 123 hours of lectures, 71 of seminars and 68 of practical sessions, plus 31.5 hours on clinic across nine sessions of three and a half hours.

The rest of Year 1 is yours to organise. The catalogue expects around 900 hours of private study across the year, over half of it for the science module, so first year asks a lot of self-directed learning.

Year 2 is much fuller, at about 498 scheduled hours. The dental surgery clinical module accounts for 336.5 of them, including 39 clinic sessions and 46 practical sessions, each three and a half hours long. Lectures across the four modules add up to around 132 hours.

Anatomy sits inside the Dental and Biomedical Science theme, taught by scientists who specialise in anatomy, oral biology and pathology alongside specialist clinicians. In Year 1 you study the whole body, including the heart and circulation, breathing, blood, the gut, liver and kidneys, muscle and hormones, with extra depth on the head and neck. Neuroanatomy concentrates on the cranial and facial nerves, especially the trigeminal nerve, which carries feeling from the teeth, gums and face.

Year 1 also covers histology, the study of tissues under the microscope, including enamel, dentine, bone, the ligament that holds each tooth in its socket and the lining of the mouth. You learn the embryology of the face and jaws, meaning how teeth and jaws form before birth. At the end of the year an objective structured practical exam (OSPE), a practical test marked pass or fail, checks parts of your anatomy and physiology.

In Year 2 anatomy becomes more clinical. You study the temporomandibular joint, where the lower jaw meets the skull, how infection spreads through the head and neck, and the detailed shapes of adult and baby teeth. Year 3 returns to the head and neck, and across the theme you build a detailed understanding of disease in this region.

Your first clinical experience is watching. Early in Year 1 you spend a day observing in a general dental practice. The clinical module also includes nine sessions on clinic at the Leeds Dental Institute, where you see how dentists, nurses and patients work together. Meanwhile the clinical skills classroom introduces infection control and simulator work.

You start looking after your own patients in Year 2, under close supervision. The focus is assessment and prevention: taking histories, examining adults, working out their risk of decay and gum disease, and giving tailored preventive advice. You also assist senior students with their treatment. Removing decay and placing fillings are practised on phantom heads first.

One route to your patients is the School's volunteer scheme for members of the public who are not registered with a local dentist. After a 15-minute screening appointment, suitable volunteers join a student waiting list and sign an agreement. They then receive a single course of free treatment, such as a scale and polish, fillings, crowns, bridges or veneers, and are discharged when it is complete.

Finding enough children to treat is a challenge for dental schools locally and nationally. At the 2026 inspection the GDC saw the steps Leeds has taken to keep a steady flow of child patients coming to student clinics, and staff and students explained them to the panel.

Leeds mixes written, clinical and professional assessments, each mapped to the GDC's outcomes. Written exams are closed book and taken in person on computer, using single best answer questions (multiple choice where you pick the most appropriate option) and short answers. Coursework includes reflective and community engagement assignments, and some group work, such as presentations, is assessed.

Year 1 is pass or fail throughout, with a practice exam across all modules at the end of Semester 1. From Year 2, modules carry marks. You must pass every module in a year to progress, and a good mark in one part of a module cannot make up for failing another. If you fail part of a module you can resit it, but in most Year 2 modules the mark is then capped at 40.

Clinical assessment runs alongside. You pass gateway assessments on the simulators or phantom heads at key stages. You also sit Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), circuits of short timed stations where examiners mark you on a set task. Other clinical assessments include unseen clinical cases, patient case reports with an oral exam, and simulated medical emergencies.

Every clinical session is graded and recorded on the School's Clinical Assessment and Feedback System (CAFS), where your supervisor adds written feedback and you add your own reflection. A cause for concern grade is reviewed by staff the same day, and you complete a structured reflection form. The Clinical Progress Committee reviews every year group four times a year and must sign you off as Ready to Progress before you move up.

To graduate, you need consistently satisfactory or better clinical grades across every area, plus a minimum number of completed treatments on real patients. A Personal Development Portfolio, your record of reflections and plans in written, audio or video form, also runs through the course. It is marked pass or fail. You get feedback on a four-step scale (not met, just met, met, exceeds) and must meet expectations in all four areas: professional standards, ethics, your learning, and self-management and wellbeing.

Most of your clinical time is spent at the Leeds Dental Institute, an NHS dental hospital run by Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in the same building as the School. You are timetabled on its clinics in every year from 1 to 5. They cover specialist areas including restorative dentistry (fillings, crowns, root canal treatment and replacing teeth), children's dentistry, orthodontics, oral medicine, oral surgery, pathology and radiology.

Outreach placements run in Years 4 and 5, at centres the GDC describes as spread across West and East Yorkshire. Each centre gives you its own induction before you treat patients. The School's placements page lists teaching clinics in Bradford, Hull and Beeston in south Leeds, and allocates students term by term so that everyone works across the sites.

The 2027 course page also names a centre at Chapel Allerton in north Leeds, so ask at an open day which centres your year will use. The same page says you pay your own travel to the Beeston, Bradford and Chapel Allerton centres, and Year 4 students receive £50 towards travel for external placements.

The School's placements page also describes short specialist placements. In Year 4 you visit a specialist orthodontic practice for one full day or two half days, and spend two weeks on an oral surgery placement at a host hospital. In Year 5 you spend a week on an oral medicine placement at a host hospital. That page was written before the new curriculum reached Years 4 and 5, so check the details at an open day.

The same page says you are on call during both hospital placements, including the middle weekend of the oral surgery fortnight. Being on call means you can be asked to help with urgent patients outside the normal timetable.

The main optional element is the Professional Development Elective, an observational placement in the summer break after Year 4. Places are limited, so you apply, and a briefing early in Year 4 explains how. Any extra costs are explained during the course. The 2026/27 programme catalogue lists intercalation and this elective as the course's optional extras.

Outside the timetable, the School's Open Wide initiative lets dental students work with children from under-represented backgrounds around Leeds to help open up routes into dentistry.

Intercalating means stepping out of the dental course for a year to study a separate course, then returning. At Leeds it is optional: you can intercalate for one year after Year 2 or after Year 3, which turns your five years into six. The course page notes that this may bring extra costs, with details given during the course.

The Worsley Building holds the School of Dentistry, the Leeds Dental Institute and the University's health sciences library, along with a student common room, a faith room and a café.

Simulation happens in two recently refurbished rooms: the Clinical Skills Classroom, fitted with phantom heads, and the Dental Haptic Simulator Classroom. The School uses digital scanning and 3D printing to produce teeth and whole arches for practice, so simulated cases look more like real patients. New simulator teaching material is developed with the University's Schools of Psychology and Engineering, drawing on research into how practical skills are learned.

In the Medical Emergency simulation room you learn to manage a patient becoming unwell in the dental chair, with video playback so you can review how you did, and you are assessed there too. The School's lecture theatre has five-person group clusters, each with a linked touchscreen and delegate system, a dual-projection teaching wall, a dedicated wheelchair space and lecture capture.

Every student has an Academic Personal Tutor for regular one-to-one meetings about both academic progress and personal issues. Through Leeds for Life, a University resource for recording your development, you can set the agenda for these meetings yourself.

Denstudy is the School's own support team for dental students. It offers study advice, from assignment writing and revision to time management, as well as pastoral care, and students told the GDC in 2026 that they particularly valued it. The Student Support Team is the first point of contact for anything affecting your studies, and a Pastoral Care Adviser runs individual appointments and drop-ins.

The School describes a dental family approach of student-led support. Options include DentSoc's Dental Parent Scheme, Peer Assisted Study Sessions where you learn with and from other dental students, and informal get-togethers for mature students. DentSoc, the dental students' society, also runs social and sports events, visits and talks.

If you struggle, the Clinical Progress Committee can set up an individual action plan, and students who fail an assessment are supported by academic staff, personal tutors, the Student Support Team and Denstudy. Students also help shape the course through the Student and Staff Partnership Forum, where representatives raise issues with staff.