first aid course in school

[leosdad]

DD is in year 6 and brought home a letter yesterday about a first aid course. It sounds very good - six hours of tuition over two days by properly qualified people and a very useful skill to have. They stressed about the limited number of places so first come first served etc. The cost is £82 yes that's right eighty two pounds and doing the math at thirty places (out of sixty in year 6) that would work out at the course costing two and a half thousand to put on.
Anybody else come across this?

Not come across it, it does seem very expensive

Hmmm ... £82 x 30 = £2460
£2460 / 6 hours = £410 per hour....

Even assuming there are some overheads and more than one tutor, that comes to "extortionate" as far as I'm concerned!

The overheads would be low as they use the school hall and teachers and parent volunteers to keep order.

DD will not be doing it

Although in principle it is a great idea unless they are using it I'm not sure how valuable it would be. How often would he be required to use it? Does the (expensive) fee include an annual refresher? I would be happy to do it for half the price

wow would be cheaper to just join the brownies. where you learn first aid constantly iirc

TBH I think Year 6 would be very young to be able to take responsibility for first aid in the event of an accident anyway - even if they know exactly what to do, they're hardly going to take charge at that ageare they? I'd sooner see it as a standard course for teenagers.

I feel it is the school that is setting the price rather than the provider (they can provide materials including CDroms, worksheets and lesson plans for the school to diy for less than the school is charging for one child)

DS did first aid in pshce the other day, and will be doing it in Scouts. Why can't the school nurse run a course after school for those interested? That would be cheaper, and is what our school nurse did for the parents who help run sports coaching and youth clubs after school.

I don't think I would be signing up for that! If you really want her to do some kind of first aid how about Brownies as someone has already suggested or a local St John's Ambulance group, much cheaper and continuously practised/used.

Have spoken to the first aid organisation involved and it sounds like it is not them charging that sort of money.
Many of the year group are in scouts, guides or something similar and I thoroughly agree with McD about joining St Johns ambulance to get the continual practice.

Maybe the school couldn't do the sums right will probably end up being cancelled due to lack of interest.

That does sound very expensive. Who is running it?

My Brownies did their First Aid badge recently, and that was about 4 hours of the instructer's time per group. OK, the Brownie badge isn't high level, but it's still the instructor's time, and she does a whole range of accredited courses.

There are often opportunities to do free first aid courses. DS1 and I (he would have been around 11 at the time) did one together at our local hospital a few years back - they ran them 3/4 times a year totally free of charge.

I'd challenge the cost with the school TBH, I think it's pretty outrageous to try and charge that much without being honest that they are using it as a fund-raiser.

We had another letter on Friday, the revised charge is now £3 per child the £82 was for the whole class of thirty children (much more like it) so dd will be applying for a place after all.

However the letter said that there had been an ambiguity on the part of the course provider - do me a favour why not admit the school made a mistake (would be a first time ever apparantly the school never makes mistakes) I was surprised to hear though that a few parents had sent in the deposit for the course at the higher charge.