Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of the levels of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Automated External Defibrillator training being taught in (a) privately funded schools and (b) higher and further education settings.
Answered by Nick Gibb
All state funded schools in England are required to teach first aid as part of statutory Health Education, which includes basic first aid. Pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, including how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators. Schools may also incorporate further defibrillator awareness and training materials to support this as part of the wider curriculum.
In 2022, the Department announced it would provide automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to schools in England to plug local gaps and provide more schools and local communities access to first aid equipment. Since the start of the programme, over 9,300 devices have been delivered to state funded schools in England.
The Department has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of CPR and AED training in schools and is undertaking an evaluation of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) generally. The Department has contracted IFF Research to undertake quantitative and qualitative research into the quality of the implementation of RSHE, including teacher confidence in teaching the statutory requirements. The Department anticipates that the final report from IFF Research will be published in early 2024. Details of the IFF Research contract are available at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0cc4d6b1-d266-459e-aaee-f5e22e4ad4c6.
As part of the Ofsted assessment of a school’s support for pupils’ personal development, inspectors make a professional judgement on whether the school is providing appropriate and effective teaching in the range of curriculum subjects, including RSHE. Schools are accountable for what they teach and should ensure that all RSHE content is factual, age appropriate, and suitable for their pupils. As part of their personal development judgement, inspectors would consider whether schools are teaching content in line with the RSHE statutory guidance.
Independent or fee paying schools are regulated by the Independent School Standards. Schools not meeting the Standards face regulatory action up to and including de-registration, or effective closure. Independent schools are not required by the Standards to provide CPR and AED training, so no such assessment has been made of the degree to which they do so. Independent schools are required to teach Health Education as part of Personal, Social, Health and Economic education and it is good practice to follow the statutory Health Education curriculum.
Further education colleges and Higher Education Institutions are autonomous organisations and as such are responsible for matters of health and safety training in their organisations.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the implementation and effectiveness of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Automated External Defibrillator training in state-funded schools since its inclusion in the national curriculum in 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
All state funded schools in England are required to teach first aid as part of statutory Health Education, which includes basic first aid. Pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, including how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators. Schools may also incorporate further defibrillator awareness and training materials to support this as part of the wider curriculum.
In 2022, the Department announced it would provide automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to schools in England to plug local gaps and provide more schools and local communities access to first aid equipment. Since the start of the programme, over 9,300 devices have been delivered to state funded schools in England.
The Department has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of CPR and AED training in schools and is undertaking an evaluation of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) generally. The Department has contracted IFF Research to undertake quantitative and qualitative research into the quality of the implementation of RSHE, including teacher confidence in teaching the statutory requirements. The Department anticipates that the final report from IFF Research will be published in early 2024. Details of the IFF Research contract are available at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/0cc4d6b1-d266-459e-aaee-f5e22e4ad4c6.
As part of the Ofsted assessment of a school’s support for pupils’ personal development, inspectors make a professional judgement on whether the school is providing appropriate and effective teaching in the range of curriculum subjects, including RSHE. Schools are accountable for what they teach and should ensure that all RSHE content is factual, age appropriate, and suitable for their pupils. As part of their personal development judgement, inspectors would consider whether schools are teaching content in line with the RSHE statutory guidance.
Independent or fee paying schools are regulated by the Independent School Standards. Schools not meeting the Standards face regulatory action up to and including de-registration, or effective closure. Independent schools are not required by the Standards to provide CPR and AED training, so no such assessment has been made of the degree to which they do so. Independent schools are required to teach Health Education as part of Personal, Social, Health and Economic education and it is good practice to follow the statutory Health Education curriculum.
Further education colleges and Higher Education Institutions are autonomous organisations and as such are responsible for matters of health and safety training in their organisations.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department plans to require schools to have defibrillators on their premises.
Answered by Will Quince
I refer the hon. Member for Swansea East to the answer I gave on 2 December 2021 to Question 79483.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of whether gambling advertising is a predictor of at risk and problem gambling in secondary school children.
Answered by Robin Walker
The department have made relationships education compulsory for all primary school pupils, relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory for all secondary school pupils and health education compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools from September 2020. Health education includes teaching pupils about the risks associated with gambling and the statutory guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
Under the topic of internet safety and harms, the guidance sets out that young people should be taught about the risks related to online gambling, including the accumulation of debt, how advertising and information is targeted at them and how to be a discerning consumer of information online.
To support schools to deliver this content, the department has produced teacher training modules that are free to download and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health. The ‘internet safety and harms’ module includes a section on gambling which covers how the industry use advertising to target different demographics.
Other curriculum subjects, such as citizenship, mathematics and computing, can also address online gambling and its dangers. This includes developing young people’s financial literacy and highlighting the dangers of online gambling whilst using digital platforms.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will include child early forced marriage and female genital mutilation in his Department's review of relationship and sex education.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is conducting a comprehensive engagement exercise to determine the scope and design of relationships education, relationships and sex education and personal, social, health and economic education, with a broad spectrum of stakeholders. This has included meeting with organisations with expertise in forced marriage and female genital mutilation, including Forward and the End Violence Against Women Coalition.
The outcome of this engagement and online call for evidence will determine the development of regulations and statutory guidance for the new subjects.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of women who have experienced domestic abuse who have had their children temporarily removed from their care by local authorities in each of the last three years.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
I am sorry, but the department does not hold the information requested.
Asked by: Carolyn Harris (Labour - Swansea East)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has had any discussions on potential discrimination faced by children with illnesses and disabilities which prevent them from being eligible for 100 percent attendance awards at school due to the need to attend regular medical appointments.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The Department does not have a national policy on how schools in England use reward systems to incentivise good attendance. It is for schools to decide whether they choose to use schemes such as school attendance awards. Schools in Wales are a devolved matter for the Welsh government.
Schools have duties under the Equality Act 2010, to have due regard to the need to eliminate conduct that is prohibited by the Act, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. Those duties on schools apply to any schemes relating to incentivising attendance.