Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure that teachers who coach pupils in a sport are trained in treating and preventing concussion.

The PE Curriculum is designed to enable schools to coach pupils in a variety of sports and physical activities. Schools have the responsibility to ensure they have considered the health and safety of their pupils.

Staff should be given the information and training needed to effectively manage risks when delivering physical education. To support them to do this, the Department has published guidance. This guidance highlights resources that can support schools to consider health and safety risks and signposts teachers to the Association for Physical Education (AfPE) for advice on health and safety in PE and school sport. More information on the AfPE can be found here: http://www.afpe.org.uk/.

On 28 April 2023, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced the publication of the first UK-wide Concussion Guidelines for Grassroots Sport to help players, coaches, parents, teachers, wider school staff, National Governing Bodies and sports administrators to identify and manage concussion effectively. The publication can be found here: https://www.sportandrecreation.org.uk/policy/research-publications/concussion-guidelines.

Expert advice is also available for schools from the National Governing Bodies of individual sports, who are responsible for issuing the safety directives for their individual sports and for ensuring appropriate measures are in place to protect participants from harm.