Emergency Life Skills

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate. She alluded to the recent Committee stage of the Education Bill, and I have read her comments in Committee, as well as in the early-day motion and at Education Question Time. In today’s debate, she has again emphasised the importance of teaching emergency life support skills to children. She has form, for which she is to be praised. Likewise, the interventions in debate by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) have shown his great interest. I praise them both; the subject is important.

Last night, at the end of the annual general meeting of my local hospital league of friends, we had a presentation by one of the hospital heart specialists. He talked about what a difference the hospital equipment financed by the friends would make, and about the huge improvement in the survival rates of people who suffer a heart attack, because of being to deal with them at the scene of their heart attack and getting them to heart specialist hospitals much more quickly, with the availability of stents, clot-busting drugs and everything else. He recounted an emergency case he had had just yesterday: the time between someone coming through the hospital door and being given a stent was 14 minutes, fantastically within the golden hour that is so important.

Survival rates have improved enormously, but the more we can do at every stage of the process—recognising the problem, getting someone to hospital and making sure they get treatment straight away—is important in achieving further improvements in the survival rates of the many people who still have heart attacks. The subject is important.

In the hon. Lady’s work with the Select Committee on Education, she has drawn attention to some of the excellent work done by schools, such as Smithills in her constituency, which she mentioned, and by programmes such as Heartstart, run by the British Heart Foundation, and others run by organisations including the St John Ambulance. I pay tribute to both those organisations. I did an infant first aid course with St John Ambulance in my constituency some time ago, and it was an eye-opener, showing me how little I knew until I did it. The more such courses are made available, and the more people take them, the better for everyone. The hon. Lady and others are raising their profile, which is important.

I was vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for cardiac risk in the young, which is another important subject that people know little about. Every week, several young, fit, healthy teenagers were dropping down dead for seemingly inexplicable reasons linked to a genetic heart condition about which they had no knowledge. The charity CRY successfully raised the profile of the problem, urging testing if relationship links increase the potential, and spreading the availability of testing. That is another important way of preventing such avoidable deaths, which cause great distress and, out of the blue, completely disrupt families.

Such initiatives not only enrich education but, as the hon. Lady said, help to engage pupils and equip them with the basic first aid skills of which all citizens should have knowledge. Regardless of whether someone is in school, there should be greater awareness and confidence, such as she gained herself, in how to administer first aid at all sorts of levels, most importantly because it can help to save lives. Things can happen anywhere, to anyone, however fit they might appear.

The hon. Lady mentioned “Casualty”; no debate on health seems to be complete without such a reference, and people can actually learn quite a bit from it, as long as they learn the right stuff. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the profile of the issue, although I am not sure whether the Seattle tourist board will compliment her on marketing that fine American city as the best place to have a heart attack—but she did her bit. I applaud all those involved in this area, as well as the campaigning of the hon. Lady and others.

Whether we think about swimming and physical education, or more broadly about the curriculum, it is important that we do everything we can to ensure that life-saving and first aid skills are part of what is taught in our schools. But, I fear, I must once more disappoint the hon. Lady and her supporters. I read about her proposed amendment to the Education Bill, in which she raised the issue; she alluded to the wives of Henry VIII then, too, and the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, said in response that had Anne Boleyn known a little more about her husband, she might not have lost her own life—an interesting response. I will not go over that debate again.

We do not believe, however, that learning emergency life skills has to be a statutory part of the national curriculum. We do not take issue with the principle or with raising the profile, and we agree that awareness for more people, in particular children, is a good thing; our problem is making it a statutory part of the national curriculum. In recent years, the national curriculum has been bent out of shape, as it has been overloaded with too many subjects and too much content, often with the best of intentions but with damaging results. At the same time, there has been too much prescription, not only about what should be taught but how it should be taught.

The Government want to restore the national curriculum to its original purpose: a core base of essential knowledge that pupils need to succeed, and which stands comparison with what pupils in various age groups learn in the nations with the best-performing education systems in the world. We want to ensure that schools have greater freedom and flexibility to teach so as to encourage more innovation and inspire pupils. Those were the express aims of the national curriculum review, which we launched in January. The review team received almost 6,000 responses to the call for evidence—the most for any education consultation—including a number of representations about the teaching of emergency life skills. I received a number of letters from my constituents on the subject, as I am sure the hon. Lady did.

I cannot pre-empt the review itself, but one of the most important objectives set by Professor Tim Oates, who is leading the review team, is to ensure that the right balance can be struck between the core national curriculum and the wider school curriculum. In all likelihood, the smaller statutory content will take up less teaching time, leaving more time for the activities, topics and subjects, including emergency life skills, that we know are also important in preparing a student for the wider world. As the hon. Lady mentioned, many schools already manage to deliver such things imaginatively and effectively, in a way that best engages their pupils.

Recent findings from the British Heart Foundation demonstrate that many parents, children and teachers want young people to learn life-saving skills at school. The non-statutory programmes of study for personal, social and health education already include teaching young people how to recognise and follow health and safety procedures, ways of reducing risk and minimising harm in risky situations, and how to use emergency and basic first aid. The internal review of PSHE that we will undertake alongside the national curriculum review will look carefully at how we can improve the quality of teaching and at how external organisations such as the British Heart Foundation can support schools to do so. That and other healthy-living issues may be delivered by outside specialist bodies in a more imaginative way that will engage kids in school so that they do not feel that it is just another lesson. I am a big fan of bringing in outside bodies to teach in a different way—outside the box and often outside the classroom.

Equally, we know that it takes only a few hours every year for pupils to learn basic resuscitation skills. I do not know whether that is 0.2% of the national curriculum time, as the hon. Member for Bolton West said, but I acknowledge that it is a small part. There would thus be plenty of room in the school day for other important subjects and activities, such as learning about healthy eating, taking part in competitive team sport, and working on projects with local businesses. Such things are important and enjoyable for pupils but, most importantly, it is for schools and teachers to decide what to teach and when to teach it. The Government believe in the professional judgment of head teachers and teachers, and we are giving them the space to exercise that judgment, and to provide a broad and enriched curriculum for their pupils.

[Julie Hilling]

I am not clear how much steer the Government are likely to give to head teachers and schools about the importance of emergency life skills. As the Minister says, under PSHE, or whatever we want to call it, an enormous range of subjects may be taught—drugs, alcohol, sex and so on. Emergency life skills are a fundamental issue of citizenship, and involve not just individuals, but society. Are the Government prepared to give head teachers a steer and to say that they should consider teaching such skills?

[Tim Loughton]

I take the hon. Lady’s point, and I think she is hearing me loud and clear. My view, which is shared by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is that it is good if more people and pupils learn about health and life-saving skills. There are good examples of that happening in schools already, regardless of what is in the curriculum, and of schools engaging and training their pupils. When that is done, pupils enjoy it, and it is a good way of engaging them in something that is useful beyond the confines of the school. I praise all schools that are doing that, and encourage them to do more, but I also encourage more schools to take it up. We are trying to free up time in the curriculum to enable them to do what they think will most benefit their pupils. Clearly, life-saving skills are way up at the top of the priorities.

The hon. Lady knows from our previous conversations that the Government’s approach is to be less prescriptive, but to encourage schools to do such things because they are right and will benefit their pupils, the community and society at large. The problem is that in opposition and now in government e-mails, letters or comments are sent to me every day saying that X, Y or Z should be a statutory part of the national curriculum. If we took just a fraction of those suggestions on board, something would have to give. The national curriculum is already completely overloaded, and my response to all those suggestions, however worthwhile, as life-saving skills clearly are, is to ask what should be taken out of the national curriculum or diluted to make space. That is the problem.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his positive comments. I have often been guilty of sending in requests, and I understand what he said about being inundated, but surely there is no greater or more important skill to equip a young person with than the ability to save someone’s life. I am sure that replacing one cross-country run a year would be welcomed across the board.

[Tim Loughton]

I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s suggestion, and I want schools to implement it, but not because an edict from Ministers says that it should be part of the national curriculum so that they think, “Where can we fit that in?” I want them to do so because it is a good thing to do, and a good way of engaging young people who might be more difficult to engage. The subject might be a good way of enticing their interest in the classroom.

During the consultation, we received proposals that the compulsory part of the national curriculum should include chess, knitting and pet care, which I am sure are all worth while. I am sure that my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady would argue that they should not have the same priority as life-saving skills, but people argue that a whole load of things should be a priority. I want schools, and heads and teachers who know their children, to have the freedom to deliver the subjects that they believe are most important and that children will most relate to and benefit from. That is what the Government are trying to do.

[Julie Hilling]

I thank the Minister for giving way yet again. He is being very generous. The Government will prescribe some parts of the national curriculum. They will prescribe the core. The hon. Member for North Swindon and I are saying that emergency life-support skills should be part of that very small core, because they are about the future, saving lives, and being a good citizen, which are all crucial. Chess, knitting and so on may be good subjects to teach, but life-saving skills are vital and could transform the United Kingdom. I do not understand why that cannot be one of the subjects in the small prescribed core.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady has answered her own question. I entirely agree about the importance of the subject, but we are trying to make the national curriculum tighter and more concise with a smaller range of subjects, giving more freedom to teachers to take on that subject, which I agree is a priority. We want a slimmer curriculum, and we do not want to add more subjects to it. However important the subject, it would add to the national curriculum.

There can be no more important training than that which allows someone to save the life of another who is injured, ill or otherwise in danger, and we must do all we can to ensure that children learn the basic skills that they might need in case of emergency. We all agree on that, but the best way is not through the academic base of knowledge that the national curriculum contains, but through the broader curriculum. Just because the skills are not specified in the national curriculum does not mean they will not and should not be taught, or that the Government are downplaying or undervaluing them. The reverse is true. I implore all schools to ensure that their pupils develop the personal and social skills they need to become responsible citizens, and to lead healthy and safe lives, and that includes being able to encourage and enable others to lead healthy and safe lives.

[Justin Tomlinson]

On the specific point about outside organisations, such as the British Heart Foundation, surely the Government could play a role in providing information so that schools can access it. When I visit my schools, they agree that it is a good scheme to take up, but do not necessarily know how to do so. Perhaps the Government could be proactive in encouraging that.

[Tim Loughton]

That is the point that I intended to end on. It is a fair and practical solution. We are not proposing to make the subject, along with pet care, knitting, chess and thousands of other helpful suggestions, part of the core national curriculum, but there are other things we can do. The hon. Member for Bolton West asked me to look at other ways of promoting the subject, and we will do so, for example, by asking individual MPs and Ministers to go into schools and ask what they are doing to teach first aid, and whether they are part of a local appeal to install a defibrillator in the town centre, and are ensuring that their children know how to use it. We can also send strong messages in our work on the PSHE review.

I think the hon. Lady suspected that we would not be able to deliver her request today, but that in no way downplays the importance of the issue that she has rightly and usefully raised. There are many other ways of promoting the subject to ensure that we have a far better educated and engaged population in our schools who will take on those skills because they want to, because it is the right thing to do, and because they will all benefit.