Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill

Debate between Robert Jenrick and Alex Cunningham

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

If we believe in the principle of training in first aid for young people, or indeed people of any age, we want to ensure quality, and quality is clearly very variable. If we provide maximum flexibility so that a school can take it very seriously or not seriously at all, then the whole scheme could be jeopardised.

I want to refer Members to my local group, Newark Community First Aid, and what it considers to be high quality. In its training it uses qualified doctors, nurses and extremely experienced first aiders. Its minimum course lasts two and half hours and has to be re-done regularly. Its preferred course lasts four hours. If we want good-quality training, some minimum standards are involved. I do not want thousands of young people to believe that they have had high-quality first aid or CPR training when they have had a half-hour video presentation—although I am sure that would be better than nothing—rather than having gone to one of these superb local community groups and spent a whole afternoon or day being trained.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about headteachers being opposed to compulsory training in schools. Which schools in his constituency have said that they are not prepared to spend a few hours a year in order to save thousands of lives?

[Robert Jenrick]

All the schools I spoke to are trying in their own way to provide training, doing what they believe is appropriate and working with local groups. However, the point remains that none of them wants it to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum, believes that that is the appropriate and best way of furthering the cause, or, given their awareness of young people, believes that forcing them is the best way of inspiring and motivating them to do it, to take it seriously, and to really believe in it.

Other headteachers raised with me the point that many other important issues could persuasively be suggested for the national curriculum, such as PHSE, biology—