Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the (a) provision of first aid training at schools and (b) levels of training given to teachers to provide first aid training to students.

Schools are now required to teach first aid as part of statutory health education. In this subject, pupils are taught how to deal with common injuries, call the emergency services, administer CPR and understand the purpose of defibrillators.

To support teachers to deliver this topic the department published a first aid teacher training module, which was produced with expert input from St John Ambulance and Resuscitation Council UK. This module is freely available on GOV.UK.

We do not expect teachers to provide first aid training to pupils unless they are qualified to do so. Many schools use organisations such as St John Ambulance, the British Heart Foundation and the British Red Cross to support delivery of the topic.

Ofsted will inspect the delivery of relationships, sex and health education in schools as part of the personal development category. The department plans to monitor delivery of the subjects, including measuring teacher confidence to teach the statutory subjects.