Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including CPR as a compulsory part of secondary education.

All state-funded schools in England are required to teach first aid, including CPR, as part of Health Education, which is statutory alongside Relationships Education for primary school aged pupils and Relationships and Sex Education for secondary school aged pupils.

The statutory requirements, which came into force in September 2020, include basic first aid for primary school children, for example dealing with common injuries such as head injuries. Pupils in secondary schools are taught further first aid, for example how to administer CPR and the purpose of defibrillators.

The statutory guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.

To support schools further, the Department’s teacher training modules cover all the teaching requirements in the statutory guidance. This includes online modules for primary and secondary teachers, containing key knowledge and facts to help teachers understand what they must teach in relation to basic first aid. The Teaching Basic First Aid training module for secondary school teachers aims to increase teachers’ knowledge and skills, develop strategies to deal with questions, and help them feel more confident teaching about basic first aid. More information about the training module is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-training-basic-first-aid.