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'This is for our Ollie' – schools defibrillator roll-out begins

Legislation and guidance Government policy Staff wellbeing Pupil wellbeing Health & Safety
There will be a defibrillator in all state-funded schools in England by the end of the academic year after the first of 20,000 units were dispatched.

It comes after campaigner Mark King – who lost his son Oliver to a cardiac arrest aged just 12 – convinced the Department for Education (DfE) to take action.

Deliveries have begun this week to schools that don’t currently have a device and guidance has been published on their use (DfE, 2023).

The DfE says that defibrillators have the potential to save the lives of pupils, staff, and visitors in schools, with research (Brown et al, 2021) showing that accessing these devices within three to five minutes of a cardiac arrest increases the chance of survival by more than 40%.

The campaign to put a device into every school has been spearheaded by the Oliver King Foundation. Oliver King was 12 when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest while swimming at school. It happened due to a condition known as sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS) which kills 12 young people under the age of 35 every week in the UK.

As the roll-out began this week, Mr King – who has campaigned for more than a decade on this issue – said that “this is for our Ollie”.

He added: “Defibrillators save lives and I have no doubt that lives will now be saved so that families do not have to suffer the heartbreak of unnecessarily losing a child."

The DfE is supplying schools in England with Mediana A-15 defibrillators. The Mediana A-15 has both visual and voice prompts to guide the rescuer through the entire process from when the device is first opened.

The updated DfE guidance offers advice for schools on where to install their device, how they might make it available for community use too, creating action plans in case of an incident, maintenance, and information on CPR and heart attacks and cardiac arrests.

The DfE is also encouraging schools to sign up to The Circuit – the national defibrillator network.

The DfE is offering support to help schools make their defibrillators available to the wider community, with external heated defibrillator cabinets being provided to primary and special schools in areas where wider defibrillator provision is lower.

Internal cabinets are also being provided to secondary schools that are receiving two or more devices so that one can be placed at the school’s sports facility, where a cardiac arrest is more likely to happen.

As part of the roll-out, videos are being provided showing how easy defibrillators are to use and schools are being asked to use these in staff meetings and assemblies.

Education secretary Gillian Keegan said: “We’re celebrating a huge milestone as we start deliveries of defibrillators to schools, working towards every school having one by the end of the academic year.

“None of this would have come about without the relentless and brave campaigning of Mark King and the Oliver King Foundation, and we are extremely grateful to him and other leading charities for the ongoing support they will doubtless provide schools from lesson plans to staff training.”