First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing this important debate.

We have heard an awful lot of statistics and numbers this afternoon, and I do not intend to dwell on those. I will focus more on a personal case from my constituency—the story of young Sam Mangoro, who was a 16-year-old pupil at Mountbatten school in Romsey. Almost exactly a year ago he suffered a heart attack and collapsed. His heart stopped beating during a PE lesson. We heard the stat that fewer than one in 10 who have a heart attack outside hospital are likely to survive, but Sam was one of the lucky ones. His PE lesson was being led by a teacher who was there for an interview—she was not even on the full-time staff. He collapsed, and she had had training.

Enormous credit is due to Mountbatten school, because it was one of the few schools in my constituency that had a defibrillator, which it had purchased some months previously. I will not say that that happened by chance; the chair of the governors had had a conversation with her son-in-law, who was a doctor for the air ambulance. He had explained to her in great detail why it was so important to have defibrillators in public places where young people might play sport—because every minute counted. As a result of that conversation the school purchased its first defibrillator, and on 6 March 2014 Sam Mangoro’s life was saved because the school had staff trained in CPR and a defibrillator on the premises.

The excellent news is that the whole Mountbatten school community has now embraced the need for CPR training, and two more defibrillators have been purchased. As might be expected in a large rural constituency, the school is on quite a large site, and the view was taken that three defibrillators were needed to provide sufficient coverage and make one of them easily reachable anywhere on the campus should a child collapse. Mountbatten school has led the way in Romsey, and Sam’s story was a wake-up call for many other schools in the area. I do not say that it is commonplace, but it is not uncommon for schools in the constituency to have defibrillators. There is a great deal of awareness of the issue. I agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that first responders and similar groups are now more likely to have defibrillators. Defibrillators can be seen outside village pubs and community halls around my constituency. Mountbatten school has become one of the British Heart Foundation’s “nation of life savers” schools.

Alongside access to defibrillators, there has to be training. Modern defibrillators talk people through the process, and I have used a defibrillator that the Oliver King Foundation demonstrated to us in this place. I know how straightforward it is, but the issue of confidence still remains. It is easiest to imbue confidence into people when they are young. We have heard that school pupils wish to learn CPR and, unlike those of us who could be described as middle-aged, they have no hesitation or trepidation; they get stuck straight in. We therefore have an important opportunity.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Education, and on 17 February we published a report calling for personal, social, health and economic education to be a statutory part of the curriculum. Many hon. Members have pitched to the Minister this afternoon the idea that CPR should be taught as part of physical education, biology or, perhaps, citizenship, but I will of course make the pitch that CPR should be part of PSHE. I cannot think of a more obvious place in the curriculum for CPR. Of course, PSHE is not currently mandatory or statutory, and I have consistently called for it to be a statutory part of our curriculum, as I firmly believe it should be. If we take that step, CPR should be a mandatory element of PSHE.

Last year, I spent a mere half an hour with St John Ambulance in Romsey, and it reminded me of some basic CPR training that I received a very long time ago when I was a member of the Brownies. I am proud to have gained my Brownie first aid badge when I was about nine or 10, and CPR has not changed radically. Way back in the 1980s we were not doing CPR to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” but St John Ambulance is keen to emphasise that that is the rhythm that people have to deploy—it is really straightforward. St John Ambulance also showed me again how to use the automatic defibrillators. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) is correct that CPR can be taught very quickly—30 minutes is all it takes—and I urge the Minister, first, to consider the Education Committee’s plea that PSHE is made a statutory part of the curriculum and, secondly, that PSHE is the right place for CPR.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

That is the third education policy announced by the Opposition during this Parliament; I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). It is a pity that he does not have a few more to put to the electorate in two months’ time. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David; it is the parliamentary assessment board all over again. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate.

There is nothing more important than keeping children, and indeed the staff who teach them, safe in our schools. This Government have already done a great deal to ensure that defibrillators are more widely available in schools. In answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, we have encouraged all schools to consider purchasing automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, as part of their first aid equipment. We refer to that in the new statutory guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions at school.

In November last year, we launched new arrangements to help schools to purchase high-quality AEDs at a significantly reduced price. To make that as easy as possible, we also produced a guide, “Automated external defibrillators (AEDs): A guide for maintained schools and academies”, covering the issues that schools might wish to consider when purchasing an AED, including location, maintenance and access to training. It was developed in collaboration with NHS ambulance services and other specialists, including Dr Andy Lockey of the Resuscitation Council, who was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bolton West. I am pleased to confirm that as of 6 March, 227 confirmed orders under the scheme had been placed, for a total of 291 AEDs.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) touched on the important role that AEDs can play in communities. Many schools view a community-access AED as a tangible contribution that they can make to their community. The AED guide suggests that schools might wish to consider community access where such a solution also meets the needs of staff members.

Access to an AED is only part of the story. Every second is important when someone suffers a cardiac arrest, and first aid skills are vital to ensuring that help is available when it is most needed, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) pointed out from his own experience when his father had a cardiac arrest. I see why he is so passionate about the issue; he is an indefatigable campaigner on it, as he is on other life skills in the curriculum.

Therefore, the guide is clear about the importance of defibrillation and of CPR in the chain of survival. Schools will already have first aiders trained in CPR, but there is no reason they cannot use the purchase of an AED as an impetus to promote knowledge of those skills more widely within the school community; indeed, the Department for Education’s guide suggests that schools do that, and we hope that many of them will choose to do so.

The hon. Member for Bolton West made a powerful case that we should go further, persuasively arguing for CPR and life-saving skills to be included in the national curriculum. Similarly powerful speeches were made by my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon, for South Derbyshire, for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I listened carefully to the story of the PE teacher attending an interview at Mountbatten school and all I can say is that I hope to goodness that they were given the job of PE teacher at that school.

[Caroline Nokes]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Gibb]

If not, I am sure that he or she has been snapped up elsewhere.

We heard powerful speeches from the hon. Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) and for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane); I am sure the latter will receive a letter from either Willie Walsh or Richard Branson, depending on which airline did not have a defibrillator. There was also a powerful speech from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

I recognise that the intention of the hon. Member for Bolton West is to ensure that more people have the knowledge and skills that could prove so valuable in assisting a child, teacher or someone visiting a school who suffers a cardiac arrest. However, whether teaching such knowledge and skills should be an addition to the national curriculum is another question.

The new national curriculum, which came into force in September 2014, represents a clear step forward for schools. It will ensure that all children have the opportunity to acquire the essential knowledge in key academic and non-academic subjects. However, I am afraid that it has now become somewhat routine for Education Ministers to come to such debates to make the case against the inclusion of a particular new requirement in the national curriculum. Proposals such as this are often supported by a persuasive argument, but their sheer number means that we need to start from a position of caution when addressing them.

The national curriculum creates a minimum expectation for the content of curriculums in maintained schools. Quite deliberately, it does not represent everything that a school should teach. Also, schools do not have a monopoly on the provision of education to children; parents and voluntary groups outside school also play an important role.

Many schools choose to include CPR and defibrillator awareness as part of their PSHE teaching. In the introduction to the new national curriculum, we have highlighted the expectation that PSHE should be taught, and improving the quality of PSHE teaching is a priority of this Government. However, we do not want to prescribe exactly which issues schools should have to cover in PSHE or other related parts of what we would call the school curriculum, as opposed to the national curriculum.

Prescribing a long list of specific content to be covered could be unproductive, leading to a tick-box approach that did not properly address the most important issues. Nor would it ensure that schools addressed those matters that were most relevant to their pupils. Indeed, we should trust schools to provide the right education for their pupils, within the overall framework of the national curriculum.