National Curriculum (Emergency Life Support Skills)

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to include the teaching of emergency life support skills in schools as a compulsory part of the National Curriculum; and for connected purposes.

Every year, 150,000 people die when first aid could have made a difference. Thirty thousand people have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital environment, but fewer than 10% survive to be discharged from hospital. Emergency life support skills are a set of actions needed to keep someone alive until professional help arrives. They include cardiopulmonary resuscitation—CPR—putting an unconscious person into the recovery position, dealing with choking and serious bleeding, and helping someone who may be having a heart attack.

Those skills are crucial at the time of a cardiac arrest when every second counts. For every minute that passes, the chance of survival falls by 10%. If CPR is started immediately, the time that someone remains in a shockable and hence reversible condition will be prolonged. It also means that more brain function will remain, and more of them will be left if they are resuscitated. It is not often that any Government have the opportunity simply, cheaply and immediately to save lives, but my Bill would allow them to do just that. Teaching these crucial life-saving skills to every school pupil would make a tangible difference to civil life in this country.

We know how it is when someone collapses or has a road traffic accident. Everyone stands around in a circle waiting for someone to act, usually too frightened to intervene. Now let us imagine a situation in which every school leaver could step in and attempt to save lives: fear gone, skills in place. Currently only 7% of people in the UK know first aid. We should compare that with Seattle, where one is rarely more than 12 feet away from someone who can save one’s life. There, one cannot graduate from school or gain one’s driving licence without learning first aid skills.

The Government like to compare us internationally. In France, Denmark and Norway, emergency life support skills are already a compulsory part of the curriculum. Norway educated 200,000 people in just six weeks. A number of states in Australia include ELS, and in America it is part of the curriculum in 36 of the 50 states. Training is happening in the UK, but the only way to ensure that all children are taught these essential skills is by placing them in the national curriculum. The British Heart Foundation has worked with me on this Bill, alongside other charities such as the Red Cross and St John Ambulance. The British Heart Foundation has more than 1,400 Heartstart schools, three quarters of which are primary schools. It has trained more than 760,000 children, a significant number of whom have had to put their life-saving skills into practice; and 625,000 children have been taught valuable life-saving skills through the St John Ambulance first-aid materials.

Let us imagine the difference that would be made if my Bill became law and every child became a life saver. The Government say they want the national curriculum to reflect the essential knowledge and understanding that people should be expected to have to enable them to take their place as an educated member of society. Surely knowing how to save the life of a family member or a member of the public would enable children to have an impact on the health of society. Ensuring that life-saving skills are taught in schools provides the chance to instil in all children how valuable life is and how important it is to be a good citizen. My Bill would provide a real, lasting cultural heritage.

There are several places where ELS would fit into the national curriculum—in PE, in science, in personal, social and health education, or in citizenship—and it takes only two hours to teach. That is just 0.2% of a school year, or the equivalent of one cross-country run. In just two hours of their school life, children can learn the skills to save a life. The skills should be taught from year 7 and refreshed each year until the pupil leaves school. In fact, the skills can be taught to younger children; I have heard some amazing stories of how young children have saved lives. Moreover, these measures would be popular. Seventy per cent. of parents, 78% of pupils and 86% of teachers have said that ELS should be taught in schools.

One of my local schools, Smithills, runs the British Heart Foundation’s Heartstart scheme. ELS is taught in a variety of ways, and the school is now aiming to widen the scheme so that during the school holidays parents and siblings are able to learn these vital skills too. The teacher in charge, Adrian Hamilton, told me that learning how to save a life in an emergency really engages the children at Smithills. He believes that it goes a long way towards helping them to become better citizens and that it should be an expected part of what happens in schools.

Since I started to promote emergency life support skills, I have heard some tragic and some inspirational stories. I met Beth, the mother of Guy Evans who sadly died at the age of 17 in 2008. Guy was riding his motorcycle when he had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia. He fell off his motorbike and lay there while his friends stood around not knowing what to do. If only they had been taught emergency life-saving skills, they would not have faced the trauma of watching their friend die without doing anything to help. They would not now be living their lives full of the suspicion that perhaps, if only they had known what to do, Guy would still be alive. Beth has been campaigning ever since to get ELS into the school curriculum and into driving tests.

I also met Tabitha. When she was 17, a week before the summer holidays, she ran to join friends and teachers on a fire drill. She does not remember anything else, but she collapsed with heart failure. She had been born with a congenital heart defect that nobody knew about. Fortunately, her school secretary had been taught CPR and so administered it until, first, an emergency responder, and then the paramedics arrived. Tabitha made it to hospital with all her faculties still intact, where she had emergency surgery and made a full recovery. Tabitha is now a voluntary emergency responder and, like Beth, is working hard to get ELS taught in schools.

I received correspondence from St Aidan’s primary school in St Helens telling me about a year 6 pupil who was with her parents and 15 other adults when her eight-year-old brother started to choke on his food. He went blue and virtually collapsed at the table. All the adults stood around not knowing what to do, but the year 6 child jumped into action, put her training into use and saved her brother’s life. If she had not been there, 15 adults might have watched a little boy die in front of them.

Sheringham Woodfields, a complex needs school, told me about the enormous sense of achievement its pupils feel when they realise that they can save a life. One of its pupils received a bravery award when he saved somebody on the Norfolk broads.

A few weeks ago, 15-year-old Patrick Horrock had a heart attack in Hindley leisure centre, just next door to my constituency. A member of staff performed CPR and another used a defibrillator to restart his heart. Patrick is alive and well because people knew what to do and had the tools to do it.

Peter Roberts, a 12-year-old, was enjoying teacakes with his mum when he realised that she could not breath, speak or shout. She was choking on a currant. Peter stepped in and delivered his training perfectly, doing back blows. After the third blow, the currant came out. What makes the story even more moving is that Peter’s mum is paraplegic, following a parachuting accident a few years ago. She had no feeling in her windpipe and did not realise that she was choking. Peter saved her life.

A young mum from the Cotelands pupil referral unit in Surrey was able to save her young son from having to have skin grafts because of the way she dealt with a serious accident. Christopher Boylan, a 17-year-old from Merseyside, saved his mum’s life by performing CPR when she suffered cardiac arrest. He had learned CPR at the Scouts.

Brittany Bull Targett, a 13-year-old, saved 11-year-old Charlie when he fell off his bike and knocked himself out. Brittany said:

“He was choking on his own blood so I cleared his airway, cleared the blood out, and put him in the recovery position. I have never done anything like this before and it was thanks to the training we had at school that I knew what to do”.

There are many such stories of people who are alive and well because someone knew what to do. I cannot imagine anything more awful than standing by and watching someone lose their life when it could have been saved if only I or someone else had known what to do. Some of my local firefighters who are Heartstart tutors said something to me that really made me think. One of the reasons that we do not act when somebody collapses is that we are scared of making things worse. They said that if a casualty has stopped breathing, they are dead. Somebody else cannot make them any deader, but they can give them the chance to live.

Cardiac arrest does not discriminate between young and old or between genders and races; it can happen to the fittest people. Tragically, 12 young people die every week from undiagnosed heart conditions. Too many of us do not know what to do. My Bill would enable our children to have the essential skills to save a life and to never have to stand by and do nothing. I do so wish that it would become law.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Julie Hilling, Craig Whittaker, Rosie Cooper, Simon Kirby, Tom Brake, Steve Rotheram, Andrew Percy, Nic Dakin, Valerie Vaz, Chris Ruane, Mr Kevin Barron and Justin Tomlinson present the Bill.

Julie Hilling accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 January 2012, and to be printed (Bill 240).