18 February 2013 
Our thanks to all of you who continue to support the campaign to make life-saving skills a mandatory part of the school curriculum. It has been an exciting few months for the campaign.

Since the petition hand-in last September, we’ve had a back bench business committee debate in Parliament (you can find the write up of the debate here) and ITV have aired their ITV Tonight special ‘How to Save a Life’.

Following the National Curriculum Review, the Government has released its proposed content on the programmes of study, which is now open for consultation. We were extremely disappointed to see that they didn’t take this opportunity to include life-saving skills as part of the curriculum. However, they will now look at exactly what each of the confirmed national curriculum subjects should include. This means there is still an opportunity to convince the Government that life-saving skills including vital CPR could be taught to all children.

We’re encouraging supporters of the campaign to submit a response to the consultation and there is a step-by-step guide on the BHF website (link below) with some suggested points to raise. Please feel free to share this page with your colleagues, friends and family, and submit a response to the consultation before it closes on 16 April 2013.

This Government will take notice of the volume of responses so please respond to the consultation, even if only for the three key questions outlined at this link:
        Consultation Response Form   (at BHF website)

If they receive a deluge of replies, we may still make a difference!
 
 
13 April 2012 
Public support for the campaign remains strong. We have created a new template letter to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, urging him to support the call for making life-saving skills a compulsory part of the National Curriculum. The letter also refers to the recent incident where Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba collapsed during a match having suffered a cardiac arrest; this has brought the importance of emergency life-saving skills to the forefront of public awareness.

More signatures on the e-petition will confirm the high level public feeling on this issue. Please encourage your family, friends and colleagues to sign it.
 
 
15 November 2011 
We now have a groundswell of support for the campaign ranging from children, parents, and teachers to many Colleges, Unions and Charities. As well as lobbying the Government directly, we are actively contributing to the curriculum reviews for PSHE, Science and PE. There is an emerging understanding that our campaign is based upon sound evidence and that we have a very strong case for inclusion in the National Curriculum. Despite this, the Secretary of State for Education is currently unrelenting in his desire to reduce the mandatory element of the curriculum.

As the campaign has now gained widespread coverage in Westminster, we have amended our template letter for MPs to reflect this.

We still need more signatures on the e-petition. Please encourage all family and friends to sign it. Once we reach 100,000 signatures, we can trigger a Commons debate on this important topic.
 
 
25 May 2011 
Thanks to all of you who have either signed the online petition at www.bhf.org.uk/els and/or contacted your local MP. We now have a significant awareness amongst the MPs about the campaign and have had some excellent feedback from quite a few of them. This first phase of the campaign has been vital to ensure that there is an awareness of what we are calling for – mandatory ELS skills training for all school children.

Those of you who have received replies from an Education Minister or the Department for Education will be aware that they are stubbornly sticking to the opinion that ELS should not be mandatory and should be left to local discretion as at present. We have a lot of support in Westminster to the contrary but now need to move to the next phase to rack up the pressure on the Government.

You may have noticed last week that the national media campaign has been launched and we are targeting national and local media opportunities over the next few weeks.

What can you do to help with this next phase?

1. If not already, please sign the online petition (www.bhf.org.uk/els) and contact your local MP.
    
2. A Parliamentary petition, officially known as an ‘Early Day Motion'   (EDM1789) has been tabled in the House of Commons (www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-11/1789) – please contact your MP and ask them to sign it.
    
3. If you have received a reply from your local MP containing a response from an Education Minister or an official at the Department for Education along the lines I outlined above, you might wish to reply to your local MP asking that they get back in touch, making the point that, of course, schools should be given some freedom to determine what they teach but knowing how to save a life is too important a skill to leave to local discretion. Currently, a significant number of children are still not receiving ELS skills training, which includes vital CPR. Making learning ELS skills a core part of the curriculum also provides the chance to instil in all children how valuable life is, and how important it is to be a good citizen. The Government has this opportunity to leave a lasting cultural legacy.