Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has plans for all secondary school students to receive compulsory first aid training, resulting in a formal qualification.

The draft guidance for the new subjects of Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education is currently being finalised following the public consultation that closed in November 2018.

The Department has set out in the draft statutory guidance that health education should cover first aid and emergency lifesaving. Schools will have flexibility to determine how the content is taught, including options to work with expert organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, that offer a range of specialist lesson plans, some of which may result in a recognised qualification.

Subject to making the regulations, schools will be required to teach the new subjects from September 2020, but they will be encouraged and supported to start teaching them from September 2019 on a voluntary basis.