first aid course concerns

[cinnamondanish]

I've just done my first aid 3 year refresher course with Safe and Sound and I've come away with concerns.
There were 15 women on my course, some of which were nannies (like myself) others were childminders or women training to be childminders.
Of these 15 women 12 had English as their first language and asked the instructor questions, spoke about incidents regarding first aid or generally joined in the conversation.
The other 3 women, 1 phillipino and 2 of eastern european origin didn't say anything throughout the day and only did their turn at the cpr part of the course or put the body in the recovery postion after watching everyone else.
At the end of the day everyone got a first aid certificate.
This is my concern. At no point during the day did we have to talk through what we were doing or would do in a situation or take a test to see if we had learnt what we had been told in order to pass.
These 3 women are now able to go off to future employers and say they are trained in first aid and show the certificate. As a nanny I feel proud to be able to say to employers that I'm trained in first aid and confident that if anything arose I could deal with it. As nannies aren't covered with the same strict guidelines as childminders I feel it's up to us to qualify ourselves in as many things as we can to help improve ourselves within our jobs.
Surely it's unsafe if it's that easy to get a certificate when you can come away without anyone checking that you understood anything said during the day and haven't been tested on it.
I'd like to get some feedback on this from others out there and your thoughts on the matter. Also if anyone has done a first aid course where you were tested at the end or had to talk through what you were doing.

A long time ago, as a teenager I did a course which had an accident simulation at the end - it was evening class and I think may have been a term long, so more than 12 hours. That put students through a sort of test, as the casualties reported back afterwards.

These days courses are shorter so assessment is ongoing. I would have thought that trainers should be determining if students are showing they have learnt something.

By copying are they not showing they have learnt something?

I did a one day course this year, for the first time- I've always done 2 day courses, and last year did a 3 day first aid at work.
I found the 1 day pretty poor, I wouldn't be confident if that was the only course I'd ever done. there was no assessment like every other course I'd done, and we didn't practice every part of the things we were taught, for example we were put in pairs and pair one practiced treating a burn, pair 2 a broken leg, pair 3 a head wound.
I prefer to update every year rather than every 3 as required and I won't be doing a one day again.

I'm one of those who is always quiet. Being an Eastern European does this mean my understanding is worse than those whose native language is English? How do you know where they were from if they never spoke?
At the end of the day first aid course does not guarantee you have the skill. It's there to show you how you should react when there is a need for it. But if something happens there is very little time to think you just get down to it and do it. Is not rocket science ... most of it is common sense. To be honest if a family employs a nanny who does not speak English they must have considered what would happen if she/he needed to call an ambulance. There is no requirement for a nanny to have any sort of training anyway.
Btw I have done 12 hour paediatric first aid course ... twice already.

Yes Nick that's true that they are learning some of it through copying but other things that were talked about during the day was just discussion. The only practical parts were putting someone in the recovery position and performing cpr. The rest of the course including things like what to do with nose bleeds, how to deal with a fever, spotting meningitis, how to deal with different cuts and other things, especially on the what not to do part was all talked through and discussed. For someone not speaking English or with limited English it would be hard to keep up and I thought that as a rule it would just be more practical for at the end of a 6 hour day learning about it Safe and Sound would want to cover themselves and check that what they had been teaching people had sunk in with a test and that they were only giving certificates to people who could prove a good level of first aid training which is what we were there for.
Maybe other companies like St John's or other first aid providers work a different way.

Presumably though, everyone has notes to take away with them ? You could go back and check things like signs/symptoms of meningitis?
I've done several first aid courses over many years, and have never been given a pass/fail test on any of them. At the end, I have a certificate that says "BfG has attended the xyz First Aid Course".
I don't think any of us know how we will actually react when faced with an emergency, or a scarey scenario until it happens.