Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-11-20
Topic: Health
Craig Whittaker (Conservative, Centre-right): I am pleased to be able to contribute to this important debate and would like to start by thanking the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on taking this Bill forward Every year some 30,000 people in the UK have cardiac arrests outside of a hospital or associated care setting, but, at present, fewer than one in 10 of them survive. With a current ambulance target response time of eight minutes, time is of the essence, so acting quickly is essential because for every minute that passes in which immediate CPR is not given, the survival chance falls by 10%. However, if immediate CPR action is taken, the chances of survival rise threefold. Furthermore, it is estimated that 150,000 people die every single year in situations where their life could potentially have been saved if someone with an understanding of first aid was on hand to act quickly We will all have our own experiences of family and friends who have had accidents or fallen into difficulty and required urgent first aid. Very recently, a close friend of mine collapsed while playing sport. Thankfully, there were qualified professionals close at hand to assist and my friend now continues to make a recovery. However, such was the seriousness of the situation that it could have been very different if medical assistance had not been on hand. Many people, however, are not so fortunate. Thousands of lives are lost every single year because people do not have the knowledge or the confidence to intervene in such circumstances The Bill, of course, is about equipping our young people with the range of emergency life-support skills that are needed to keep somebody alive in such circumstances until professional help arrives. Depending upon the situation, the range of skills and knowledge which such training could provide may well prove to be the difference at a time of a cardiac arrest or a serious accident, when every second counts We all appreciate the importance of ensuring that as many people as possible are adequately equipped to assist in such situations, should they be required to do so. Indeed, I wholeheartedly agree with those hon. Members who have suggested that this process needs to start in schools to ensure that all of our young people are taught the life-saving skills that will remain with them through the rest of their lives. Ultimately, the question becomes: how do we encourage schools to teach these vital skills to our young people Earlier this year in the last parliamentary Session, the Education Committee, of which I was a member at the time, published a report regarding the teaching of PSHE in schools. PSHE covers a wide programme of learning through which our young people acquire the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to manage their daily lives. Among the various topics taught in our schools as part of this broad subject area is life-saving skills, which include CPR and more general first aid training. While it is up to individual schools to determine how they deliver PSHE, the Committee’s report makes it clear that this is an important part of the curriculum and that the Government should take various steps to improve the quality of provision in schools The final recommendations from the Committee cited a number of key steps that are required to improve the quality of PSHE in schools. These included formally measuring the quality of provision, incentivising schools to improve the way in which they deliver PSHE, and the need to ensure that appropriate curriculum time is devoted to the subject I was pleased to see that the Government welcomed the report’s findings when they set out their initial response in July on improving the quality of that education in schools. They made it clear that they want all schools to put high-quality PSHE at the heart of the curriculum. In March, before formally responding to the Committee’s recommendations, the Secretary of State announced new measures to improve the quality of PSHE, including the development of a new, rigorous PSHE quality mark and working with the PSHE Association to help them to quality-assure resources. The new PSHE quality mark will be brought in line with similar accreditations of this type that require schools to provide evidence of the depth and quality of their teaching in a particular area. That includes first aid training As part of the Government’s initial response to the report in July, they stated that they will work with Ofsted on how best to capture evidence of the quality of PSHE education in schools. They also acknowledged the importance of schools publishing the relevant information about their PSHE curriculum on their websites, and they have indicated that they are considering options to further strengthen schools’ compliance with the current requirements In the longer term, the Government have now indicated that they want to go further and that they will work with the sector to develop further measures to improve quality. Indeed, the Secretary of State made it clear that she wanted to make significant progress on this issue during this Parliament and would consider in full the arguments put forward by the Committee as part of that work to ensure that PSHE is taught well in every school. I have alluded to the Committee’s report, and to the assurances that have been provided by the Secretary of State in response to it, in order to make clear the Government’s commitment to enhancing this education, of which life-saving skills are an integral part Along with other hon. Members, I look forward to seeing what steps the Secretary of State will take further to improve the quality of PSHE education in schools, but I am somewhat reassured by her commitment to take this work forward throughout the duration of this Parliament. Given the Government’s commitment to improving this provision, the delivery of first aid training and its role within the wider subject area may well be part of the Secretary of State’s report. It might therefore be somewhat premature to consider the question of first aid training in schools while we are still awaiting her report on the wider subject area, of which first aid forms an integral part According to research by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, only 7% of the UK population have the skills and the confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency. We all agree that starting early and providing training in schools is absolutely key to changing that situation in the longer term, but we must not forget the need to raise awareness of the issue throughout the wider community as well. Indeed, even if the Bill were approved, it would take many years to improve the degree to which life-saving skills were common among the general population. Surely we need to start now by raising the profile of this issue, and not only in schools.