One thousand, one hundred and seventy-two individuals have applied for dental foundation year 1 (DF1) training posts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for 2013. All of those eligible are being assessed this month by trained and calibrated dental trainers and educators. Postgraduate deaneries will allocate successful candidates to training practices in December for year-long posts starting in February 2013, and in the spring for posts starting next summer.

One thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine applicants, of whom 1,026 are students or recent graduates of UK dental schools, have been invited to attend assessment centres to compete for an estimated 952 funded training posts in NHS practices. Some applicants may also have applied to Scotland where there are further training posts available. This is the second year that COPDEND (the UK Committee of Postgraduate Dental Deans and Directors) working in partnership with London Deanery has organised national recruitment to dental foundation training posts.

Professor Chris Franklin, Chair of COPDEND, said 'We are building on the process we introduced last year to ensure applicants have a fair and transparent way to apply for these important training posts.'

Meanwhile, the British Dental Association (BDA) has announced that young dentists are calling for support for their demand for government to guarantee all graduates from UK dental schools a Dental Foundation Training (DFT) place. The demand comes in the BDA's newly-published YDC Asks, a mini-manifesto for young dentists developed by the organisation's Young Dentists Committee (YDC).

The Committee is asking those who support it to sign a government e-petition. The petition argues that the failure to allocate DFT places to UK graduates both wastes taxpayers' money invested in their training, because denying each individual a DFT place means that they are prevented from providing NHS care, and is unfair to the graduates who have taken on significant amounts of debt in order to complete their studies.

The launch of the petition follows a recent admission by the Department of Health that 35 UK graduates from the 2011 cohort have not been allocated DFT places. Each graduate, DH acknowledged, will have cost the public purse approximately £150,000 to train.

To sign the e-petition go to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/40302.