Secondary school students nationwide will be taught CPR and first aid for common injuries, according to The Guardian.
The government plans for life-saving skills in schools such as defibrillator training will be in place from 2020.
All secondary school leavers across England will be shown how to administer CPR and give basic treatments under the new plans.
For every minute without life-saving treatment the chance of survival drops by about 10%
— DfE (@educationgovuk) January 3, 2019
From 2020 basic life-saving skills will be taught to all children, giving them the confidence and knowledge to help save a life pic.twitter.com/6xYMV7XA0o
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) have claimed that the plans will prove pivotal in improving the less than 10 percent survival rate for British citizens who have cardiac arrests outside of hospitals.
Cardiac arrest survival rates in countries which teach students cardiopulmonary resuscitation in schools are more than double those in the United Kingdom.
Education secretary Damian Hinds commented on the plans;
“On arriving at university I was struck that the American students I met knew how to do CPR, and I didn’t have a clue."
"As a father I want my children to have the knowledge and skills they need to keep themselves safe and help others, and, as education secretary, I want that for every child," he continued.
“Learning the basic skills of first aid and techniques like CPR will give young people the confidence to know that they can step in to help someone else in need, and in the most extreme cases it could potentially save a life.”
The set of proposals are one aspect of the Department for Education's aim to improve health, sex and relationships instruction in schools.
Chief executive of the BHF, Simon Gillespie, said: “The Department for Education’s plans to introduce CPR on to the curriculum is a decisive moment in the battle to improve cardiac arrest survival rates, following years of campaigning by the BHF and others."
“There are 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year, and each day people needlessly die because bystanders don’t have the confidence or knowledge to perform CPR and defibrillation," he commented.
Too many #cardiacarrest victims die because bystanders don’t have the confidence or knowledge to perform #CPR. After many years of campaigning by @TheBHF and others, every young person in England will have the opportunity to learn CPR, the vital skills to save a life. pic.twitter.com/safEeiJrrW
— Simon Gillespie (@simonmgillespie) January 3, 2019
“This is why all schoolchildren should be given the opportunity to learn these skills. Introducing CPR lessons into health education in all state-funded secondary schools is a significant step that promises to improve the odds of survival for countless people.”
CPR is crucial for any age group to learn, the plans are a massive step forward in health education.
