Face to Face courses in a post Covid-19 world
With the lockdown situation being as it is, we have had to cancel all our face to face courses. Unfortunately this will have to continue until we are given guidance by the regulatory authorities that states that we can reopen again (with whatever distancing requirements are necessary).
The HSE along with the Secretary of State for education and Ofqual have all stated that they will not recognise any workplace first aid training courses if the face to face course assessment elements of the course is done in a non-traditional face to face manor. The statement was released by the HSE and others around three weeks ago at the beginning of the lockdown. At the time they stated that they would be reviewing this as time went on.
Their statement advised that they were four workplace first aid courses that could have a three-month extension applied to the certificate expiry date should they be expiring in the three months following the date of lockdown. This statement was supported by Ofsted and was replicated on the courses where they influence the syllabus.
The courses mentioned in the joint statement are:
- emergency first aid at work
- first aid at work
- offshore first aid
- offshore medic
- emergency paediatric first aid
- paediatric first aid
By inference, all other first aid certificates that expire during the period of lockdown cannot be extended in the same way. These include:
- basic life support,
- first aid refresher training,
- outdoor first aid,
- Forestry Commission first aid, and
- other more advanced workplace first aid training certificates such as the administration of emergency medical gases, and the FREC suite of courses and the equivalents developed by other awarding organisations.
With this in mind we will be releasing entirely new course dates for all of those face to face courses where is a requirement for physical face to face assessment as part of the course.
Naturally, we are awaiting further guidance from the awarding organisations as well as the HSE, Ofqual, Ofsted, and the Secretary of State for education. As soon as we get this, we will be in a better position to provide you with an update on exactly what can and cannot be done in terms of running physical training courses over the next few months.
Until then, we’ll continue to run our webinar courses & bespoke blended webinar courses alongside the 49 e-learning courses that we currently offer. If you haven’t had a look at these yet, click on this link. You might be surprised to see the range of e-learning courses that we offer. And please keep checking back as we’re working to add to this list in coming weeks.
If you would like to register your interest in these face to face courses, please fill in your details in the form below so that we can add you to the list.
In the meantime, please keep looking out for each other and keep safe.
Chris.
