Student unions have welcomed the government’s decision to phase out lotteries when deciding which students should be admitted to popular courses.

At the moment, some of the places for in-demand subjects like medicine, dentistry and architecture are allocated to the brightest students while the rest are allocated through a lottery.

‘That means more attention can be paid to motivation and other issues which are important when selecting students,’ LSVb chairman Tom Hoven told news agency ANP.

However, the organisation is against the government’s plan to restrict school leavers who want to study medicine and dentistry to a single application. It also opposes the introduction of fees to take part in the selection process.

Lotteries will be stopped in 2017.