Emergency First Aid For Schools

Emergency first aid for schools training delivered at your school or chosen venue. One full day. Practical CPR, AED, choking, and medical emergency response built around the realities of school life.

QUALIFICATION: Emergency First Aid for Schools
DURATION: 1 full day / 6 learning hours	DELIVERY: Face-to-face only	GROUP SIZE: Max 12 learners
CERTIFICATE: Emergency First Aid for Schools	VALIDITY 3 years / Annual refresher recommended	AWARDING BODIES: Worksafe / FAIB
Meets Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 and DfE statutory guidance on first aid in schools. CPR content reflects the Resuscitation Council UK 2025 Resuscitation Guidelines

Course Overview

School staff are, in most cases, the first people on scene when something goes wrong. Not paramedics. Not a school nurse. The teacher whose lesson just ended, the midday supervisor on the playground, the teaching assistant sitting next to a child who suddenly stops responding. In that moment, what they know and what they’re confident enough to do matters enormously.

Emergency First Aid for Schools gives education staff the knowledge, practical skills, and genuine confidence to respond effectively when a child, colleague, or visitor becomes injured or unwell. It’s built around the realities of school life: the playground fall, the child who chokes in the dining hall, the pupil with a known allergy whose EpiPen is somewhere in the building, the colleague who collapses during a staff meeting.

Two things consistently come out of this training that go beyond technique. The first is awareness. A teaching assistant who had never considered the full picture of a child’s allergy risk, where their medication was stored, how it would be accessed, and what the school’s procedures actually were in a real emergency, leaves this course thinking very differently about their daily role. The second is confidence. Kitchen and dining staff who had never practised managing a choking child leave knowing exactly what to do and feeling prepared rather than panicked. The course reflects the Resuscitation Council UK 2025 Resuscitation Guidelines, including the Paediatric Life Support Guidelines, the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, and DfE statutory guidance on first aid in schools.

Course Details

Duration: 1 full day (6 learning hours)
Delivery: Face-to-face only, at your school or chosen venue
Certificate: Emergency First Aid for Schools certificate (Worksafe and FAIB-accredited)
Awarding organisations: Worksafe, FAIB
Validity: 3 years. Annual refresher recommended.
Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for anyone working in an education environment who may need to respond to a first aid emergency.

Teachers and teaching assistants across all key stages
Midday supervisors and lunchtime staff
School support staff and office teams
SEN and pastoral staff with close daily contact with pupils
Early years practitioners in school-based settings
School leaders, governors, and site managers
Staff supporting school trips and extracurricular activities
Volunteers regularly working within the school

No previous first aid experience is needed. This course is designed for mixed staff groups and is equally valuable for those with no prior training and those seeking a structured refresher. Early years practitioners in standalone nursery settings may require our Paediatric First Aid course instead.

Not sure which is right for your setting? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you commit.

The Legal Requirement

Schools are legally required to make adequate and appropriate first aid provision under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981. The DfE statutory guidance on first aid in schools is explicit that this provision must be based on a risk assessment of the school’s specific needs, and that at least one trained first aider should be available at all times, including during off-site activities.

The DfE guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions (2015), which is due to be updated in September 2026, adds a further layer of responsibility. Schools must have individual healthcare plans for pupils with conditions including severe allergies, asthma, diabetes, and epilepsy. Staff who support those pupils need to understand not just what the plan says, but what it means in a real emergency and what their role is when things don’t go to plan.

Benedict’s Law, introduced through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026, makes allergy awareness training a statutory requirement for school staff in England from September 2026. Schools must hold spare in-date adrenaline auto-injectors on site and ensure every pupil with a known allergy has an individual healthcare and allergy action plan. Benedict’s Law allergy awareness training is available as an additional module on request alongside this course. Read more in our guide: Benedict’s Law: What Schools Need to Know for September 2026.

What the Day Covers

All content reflects the Resuscitation Council UK 2025 Resuscitation Guidelines, DfE first aid in schools guidance, and DfE guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions throughout. Topics covered include:

The role of the school first aider: responsibilities, limits, and the legal framework
Primary survey and systematic casualty assessment
Managing an unresponsive casualty: airway, breathing, recovery position
CPR for adults and children: technique, rate, depth, and ratio in line with the RCUK 2025 guidelines
AED use in schools: correct pad placement and school-specific considerations, including accessibility and location
Choking in adults and children: recognition and response, including back blows and abdominal thrusts
Bleeding and shock: control techniques and monitoring
Head injuries: recognition, immediate response, and when to escalate
Suspected fractures and sprains: initial management
Medical emergencies commonly seen in schools: seizures, asthma attacks, diabetic emergencies, and anaphylaxis
Pupils with medical conditions: understanding individual healthcare plans and the first aider’s role within them
Allergy awareness in practice: from knowing a child has an allergy to being confident in a real emergency, including medication access and risk assessment
Incident recording, handover to emergency services, and school reporting procedures

Every course is also built to include your school’s policies, reporting routes, and individual healthcare plan procedures as standard.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is delivered face-to-face only, at your school or chosen venue. Sessions are practical, inclusive, and built around the real situations school staff encounter.

Groups are capped at 12 to ensure every member of staff gets sufficient hands-on practice time. Every session is built around your school’s specific policies, the age range of your pupils, SEND considerations, and your identified risk profile. We can also adapt for MATs, delivering combined sessions across multiple sites or separate scheduled delivery at each school. If you haven’t reviewed your first aid risk assessment recently, we can discuss what that might involve during the enquiry process.

Delivery includes:

Hands-on CPR practice on adult and child manikins with direct trainer feedback
Practical AED training with training defibrillators
Scenario-based learning drawn from real school settings, including playground incidents, dining hall choking, and classroom medical emergencies
Discussion of individual healthcare plans, allergy risk assessment, and the practical implications for daily school life
Individual assessment of practical competencies throughout the day

Emergency First Aid for Schools or Paediatric First Aid?

The right course depends on your setting and who you are training.

Emergency First Aid for Schools is right for school staff across all roles who need a practical, education-specific first aid qualification. It covers adults and children, is built around school scenarios, and meets the DfE and HSE requirements for school first aid provision in most settings.

Paediatric First Aid is right for early years practitioners and childcare workers with specific EYFS obligations, providers who need a qualification covering infants and young children in depth, and EYFS settings where the statutory 12-hour requirement applies. It goes further into paediatric-specific content and meets the EYFS Statutory Framework requirements.

If your school includes an EYFS unit or nursery class with specific EYFS obligations, you may need both. We don’t make that determination for schools; the responsibility sits with you. But we do provide guidance throughout the enquiry process.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a Worksafe and FAIB-accredited Emergency First Aid for Schools certificate, valid for 3 years.

Annual refresher training is strongly recommended to maintain practical confidence and keep skills current. CPR technique deteriorates faster than people expect without regular practice. Many schools build an annual skills update into their inset day programme.

Our Basic Life Support and AED Training is the natural next step between full requalification cycles.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we gather information about your workplace: your incident reporting forms, your internal procedures, and the specific hazards your team actually faces. On the day, your trainer works that into every scenario, every discussion, every practical exercise. If your staff work in a care home, they’re not practising on hypothetical office workers. If your team are lone workers, that context shapes how the session runs.

It means the training lands. Not because it was well-delivered in a generic sense, but because it was relevant to the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually encounter.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

98.9% learner satisfaction across all Prima Cura courses
All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
We advise honestly on the qualification level at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your workforce, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your school or chosen venue across Manchester, Greater Manchester, and the wider North West. We also deliver nationally across England, including North England, South England, London, and Surrey.

All sessions are led by experienced Prima Cura Training instructors. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of hands-on learning.

Our associate network means we can deliver across England. You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

Is this course a legal requirement for schools?

Schools are legally required to make adequate and appropriate first aid provision under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981. The DfE first aid in schools guidance requires that provision to be based on a risk assessment and that at least one trained first aider is available at all times, including on off-site activities. There is no single mandated qualification, but training must be appropriate to the assessed risk. This course meets that standard for most school settings.

Does this course cover allergies and individual healthcare plans?

Yes, and in more practical depth than many school first aid courses. The course covers anaphylaxis recognition and response, the role of individual healthcare plans under DfE guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions, medication access in a real emergency, and how allergy awareness connects to risk assessment and pupil independence. Staff leave thinking differently about the daily management of pupils with medical needs. From September 2026, Benedict’s Law makes allergy awareness training a statutory requirement for all school staff. Benedict’s Law training is available as an additional module on request alongside this course.

Can training be delivered on inset days or for multi-academy trusts?

Yes to both. Inset days are the most common delivery slot, and we regularly schedule around school calendars. We can also deliver during staff training events, twilight sessions, or scheduled CPD time, subject to covering the full six learning hours. For MATs, we deliver through combined sessions bringing staff from multiple schools together, or through separate scheduled delivery at each site across Greater Manchester, the wider North West, and nationally. Get in touch to discuss the most practical approach for your trust.

Does this course cover paediatric CPR to the 2025 guidelines?

Yes. All CPR and AED content is aligned with the Resuscitation Council UK 2025 Resuscitation Guidelines, which updated the evidence base for both adult and paediatric resuscitation. The course covers CPR for adults and children with technique, rate, depth, and ratio, all reflecting the current guidelines. For a full summary of what changed for paediatric CPR in 2025, see our guide: Paediatric CPR: 2025 Guidelines Explained.

Related Courses

Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, all courses reflect current UK guidance and best practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD. Because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable individuals, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the Resuscitation Council UK, the Department for Education, the Health and Safety Executive, and current UK legislation, including the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training | 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer | Last reviewed: June 2026 | Next review: June 2027

This page is for general guidance only and reflects current UK legislation, DfE guidance, and Resuscitation Council UK 2025 guidelines as of the date of review. It does not constitute legal or clinical advice. Schools remain responsible for carrying out their own first aid needs assessment, determining appropriate first aid provision for their setting, and ensuring their arrangements comply with the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981 and DfE statutory guidance. Individual healthcare plans for pupils with medical conditions must be developed and maintained in line with DfE guidance on supporting pupils with medical conditions at school and must not be replaced by or confused with general first aid training.

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Emergency First Aid for Schools