Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to his oral contribution of 25 February 2019, Official Report column 36, what his timescale is for the (a) piloting and (b) introduction of teaching on lifesaving and first aid skills; and what support his Department is providing to schools for that teaching.

The Department is committed to supporting schools to deliver high quality relationships education, relationships and sex education and health education. This includes appropriate support on the teaching of lifesaving and first aid skills.

The Department is aware that many schools already teach these subjects well, often as part of personal, social, health, and economic education and will be able to adapt to the new requirements quickly and draw on existing high-quality resources. An early adopter school programme has been established to support early teaching of the new requirements from September 2019. The lessons learned from these early adopter schools will be shared with schools working to a slower timetable.

The Department’s consultation on the draft statutory guidance identified training as a priority for many teachers. The Department will be working with subject experts, teachers and schools to determine how this training can be structured and what should be contained in it. The Department intends to develop and test a training programme that is accessible to teachers by September 2020.

The budget of £6 million in the 2019/20 financial year will support the development of a package of support for all schools. Funding beyond 2019/20 will be a matter for the forthcoming Spending Review.

There are already free resources available for schools to teach first aid, including those provided by the Every Child a Lifesaver Coalition, made up of the British Heart Foundation, St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross.