Join the campaign to teach Emergency Life Support skills in schools

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood / @msgracefh

You know what I did last week? Well, I did a lot of things. I went to my first scrutiny committee, held my first advice surgery as a councillor, had a walkabout in my ward with officers, posted a lot of letters to Julie Hilling MP’s constituents, bought a couple of boxes of mangoes and spent a lot of time shouting at the cats. You know, the usual.

Slightly more unusually, I also stuffed a lot of envelopes and addressed them to almost every school in Bolton West. This is because of a letter Julie wrote, encouraging schools in the constituency to teach Emergency Life Support skills.

Emergency Life Support skills are a set of actions that save lives, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation and dealing with choking and bleeding. There’s a school in Bolton West called Smithills School, who already teach their pupils these skills through the British Heart Foundation Heartstart course, and their teacher Adrian Hamilton told Julie about the benefits that the course has given to their pupils: empowering them with the confidence to administer life-saving techniques, and reinforcing a message of citizenship. Mr. Hamilton told Julie that he thought ELS skills should be an expected part of what happens in schools.

A number of other schools do the same. Sheringham Woodfields, a school for children with complex needs, reports the enormous sense of achievement that its pupils feel when they realise that they can save a life. Archbishop Ilsley Catholic Technology College in Birmingham decided to teach ELS after one parent died from a heart attack in front of his family; the school felt that something positive should come from the tragedy. Meanwhile, Abbey Hill primary and nursery school reported: “A lot of our children are brought up in an extremely deprived area and are not always adequately supervised. ELS gives them the confidence to deal with an emergency, should one arise, and no adult was around…The silence in the room when the children are watching the DVD from the resource pack is remarkable. They watch it avidly and are always keen to take part in the sessions. They are also very impressed when we get the dolls out to practise resuscitation and can’t believe they get to have a go on a ‘real live’ doll!”

But teaching these skills is still quite unusual for a school in the UK. What’d be great – for kids and for the 150,000 people who die every year in situations where first aid could have made a difference – is if ELS skills were on the National Curriculum, like it is in France, Denmark, Norway, a number of the states in Australia, and 36 of the 50 United States.

And that’s why Julie, who was a member of the Education Bill Committee, was inspired to move an amendment to the Education Bill to that effect when it was still at committee stage. She pointed out that every year in the UK, 30,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside the hospital environment, of which fewer than 10% survive. Knowing ELS can often mean the difference between life and death.

The clause got rejected; and Nick Gibb, Minister for Schools, retorted:

“I take issue with the hon. Lady when she says that this is more important than learning about the six wives of Henry VIII. If Anne Boleyn had known more about Henry VIII, it might have saved her life.”

A little flippant? Maybe. The government argues that they want as little prescription as possible in the national curriculum: but as teachers and campaigners have pointed out, they’ve already made the call that says Latin will get you an English Baccalaureate but R.E. won’t. When their White Paper asserts that ‘we will ensure there is space in the school day, and resources for school leaders, to guarantee a truly rounded education for all’, might they be able to suggest teachers find a gap in the curriculum to raise kids’ confidence by teaching them to save lives?

Having been defeated at the committee stage, Julie is continuing the campaign by working with the schools in her constituency. If you agree that Emergency Life Support skills are worth teaching, why not join the campaign by writing to your own MP and encouraging them to do the same?