Year 8 students learn CPR for Restart a Heart Day

Year 8 students from Cockburn School and Cockburn John Charles Academy learn CPR for Restart a Heart Day

All students in Year 8 received CPR training as part of Restart a Heart Day.

Yorkshire Ambulance Service marked the 10-year anniversary of Restart a Heart Day with events designed to improve cardiac arrest survival rates - including providing CPR training sessions to secondary schools. Tens of thousands of students across 166 schools took part. Over the last 10 years there have been over 202,000 students taught CPR.

Each year in the UK, approximately 30,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests happen. Sadly, the chances of survival and recovery are less than 10 per cent.

If CPR is performed by bystanders, the person’s chance of survival can be more than doubled.

Learning this simple, yet vital skill ensures patients have as much oxygen in the brain as possible for when emergency services arrive. This can help save lives.

Since the Restart a Heart campaign was launched in 2014, bystander CPR rates in Yorkshire have increased from 39.9% (2014) to 75.7% (2022).

Hundreds of off-duty ambulance staff and volunteers visited secondary schools across the region to provide vital CPR training to tens of thousands of students. One of the ambulance staff at Cockburn spent his day off leading the sessions and then left to do a full shift in his ambulance.

The ambulance staff are committed to making sure that pupils have the skills to save a life if they ever come across someone in cardiac arrest.

His Majesty King Charles III was represented by The Deputy Lieutenant of West Yorkshire, Major Stan Hardy who visited both schools during the morning. He came to commend the Yorkshire Ambulance staff who spent the day teaching CPR to all students in Year 8 and to talk to the pupils about a boy from another school who had taken part in the training last year and who had saved the life of a retired army officer on Remembrance Day when he went into cardiac arrest. The Deputy Lieutenant praised the pupils saying how focused and respectful they were.

David Gurney, Executive Headteacher of Cockburn Multi-academy Trust said “Ensuring that our young people know about their responsibilities as part of the wider community is very important. I am delighted that our outstanding PSHCE curriculum included this event again this year. I am extremely proud of how our pupils showed great resilience and determination to learn to perform CPR”.