2. Will the First Minister make a statement on the teaching of basic first aid in schools? OAQ54893

Llywydd, we encourage everyone to learn first aid. It is for schools to decide if and how best to provide first aid learning for their pupils. The statutory guidance that will surround the new curriculum will provide that learners should be able to respond to harmful situations and safely intervene when others' health is at risk.

Can I thank the First Minister for that response? There are certain life skills that all children should have when they leave school—skills that will be more useful than a lot that is in the formal curriculum. Basic first aid, including things such as stopping heavy bleeding, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the Heimlich manoeuvre, are basic life skills and they help someone save a life. Does the First Minister agree that these need to be taught either within school or outside of school? But  they need to be taught so young children can actually save lives. 

Well, can I entirely agree with Mike Hedges about the importance of first aid, about those aspects that he has drawn attention to specifically? Wales is fortunate, Dirprwy Lywydd, in having a vibrant third sector in the health area in which a range of opportunities exist for acquiring and practising skills in first aid. The curriculum for Wales guidance, which was published for feedback in April 2019, had a lot of comments in from those organisations in relation to it and, as a result, CPR and first aid guidance will be strengthened and it will involve the British Heart Foundation, St John Ambulance and the Red Cross, both in making sure that the right guidance is given to schools and that there is a range of resources and lesson plans available so that practitioners can be confident in meeting exactly those needs to which Mike Hedges has referred. 

According to St John Cymru, less than one in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and nearly a third of UK adults would not have the confidence to intervene if they saw someone in need. Now, improved education of our youngsters is definitely the answer to this cardiac catastrophe. Children in England will be taught CPR and other lifesaving skills from September 2020, and every local authority in Scotland has committed to teaching CPR. The new curriculum, however, does not make the teaching of first aid and lifesaving skills compulsory, yet, according to the British Heart Foundation, nearly one in four could survive if all young people were trained. I appreciate that the Minister for Education wants to move away from prescribed subjects, however will you allow an exception by making CPR training a compulsory part of the new curriculum?

The difficulty is, Dirprwy Lywydd, as the Member knows, that right around this Chamber there are people who argue for a whole range of exceptions to be made. Everybody here will have an example of something that they think and believe passionately should be made an exception to the rule in the way our curriculum is constructed. And, once you start to go down that route, the curriculum will stop being what we in this Chamber have said we want it to be: purpose-led and in the hands of teachers when it comes to implementation.

Of course, young people should be taught about these important things, and can be within our schools: 99 per cent of schools in Wales participate in the Welsh network of healthy schools schemes, with all that goes alongside that, including teaching young people about these things. But Mike Hedges made an important point in his supplementary question, that opportunities for learning first aid don't simply exist in schools. There are many other ways in which people can learn these skills. I myself took part in a fantastic scheme that Cardiff medical school students are running here in Cardiff. They held a session over in the Wales Millennium Centre here just before Christmas, where any member of the public could be trained in basic first aid to give them the confidence to intervene in the circumstances that Janet Finch-Saunders has mentioned, and there is a broader set of actions that need to be taken to address something that is, I absolutely agree, a very important issue here in Wales. 

I agree, as do 70 per cent of parents and the Youth Parliament, that one lesson per year of first aid should be presented to our pupils. Now, I understand the problem that you have with the new curriculum, and the vision and concept underpinning it, but there are some things that are so important that you do need that assurance and clarity on them. I'm pleased to hear that guidance is to be strengthened, but perhaps there's a further opportunity: perhaps we could look at reforming the part that is called 'planning your curriculum', and I would ask you whether you'd be willing to have discussions with the Minister for Education to see whether that section could be amended so that first aid becomes a more core part of the curriculum.

Well, thank you for that idea. If there's a way that we can be flexible in the way that we develop things and the advice that we give to people, then of course I am willing to discuss that with the Minister for Education. But the principle, as we've discussed more than once on the floor of the Assembly, is to create a new curriculum where we create the fundamental things, but we give the responsibility to the teachers in the classroom to do things in the way that works for them and for the children before them.