Year 8 students 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 Restart a Heart Day with events designed to improve cardiac arrest survival rates - including providing CPR training sessions to secondary schools. 33,000 students across 133 schools took part. Over the last 9-years there have been 200,000 students taught CPR.

Since the Restart a Heart campaign was launched in 2014, bystander CPR rates in Yorkshire have increased from 39.9 per cent to 74.9 per cent in 2021.

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 at Cockburn School. 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 girl from another school who had taken part in the training last year and who had saved the life of her grandfather on Christmas day when he went into cardiac arrest. The Deputy Lieutenant praised the pupils saying how focused and respectful they were.

Rob Dixon, Head of School at Cockburn School said “We are always looking for ways to educate our young people in their responsibilities as part of the wider community. I am delighted that our outstanding PSHCE curriculum included this event. The pupils showed resilience and determination to learn to perform CPR and I am very proud of them all.”