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First Aid: Secondary Education

Asked by Apsana BegumLabourDepartment for EducationTabled Answered 5 June 2026UIN 3810

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has considered including medical first response to drug misuse as part of mandatory first-aid training in secondary schools.

Answered by Georgia Gould

All state funded schools are required to teach first aid as part of the statutory health education set out in the relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.

The RSHE guidance requires primary schools to teach basic first aid, such as dealing with common injuries. In secondary schools, pupils learn about CPR, defibrillator use, the law on knife crime, how to manage personal safety in increasingly independent situations including around roads, and drug misuse. Schools have flexibility in how they deliver this content.

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