Award in Emergency First Aid at Work and Award in First Aid at Work

First aid is the initial assistance or treatment given to a person who is injured or taken ill.

The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 require employers to provide adequate and appropriate equipment, facilities and personnel to enable first aid to be given to employees if they are injured or become ill at work.

Emergency First Aid at Work — The minimum duration of contact hours (time set aside for direct training and assessing excluding breaks) for this award is six hours. These can be delivered over a minimum of one day or a maximum of three weeks with a minimum of two hours per session.

First Aid at Work — The minimum duration of contact hours (time set aside for direct training and assessing excluding breaks) for this award is 18 hours. These can be delivered over a minimum of three days or a maximum of 10 weeks with a minimum of two hours per session.

Note: Contact hours means time set aside for direct teaching and practical time.

Any person in the workplace wanting to become an accredited first-aider or who has been nominated as a first-aider.

These are non-devolved awards due to the specialised nature of the qualifications. All SQA approved centres wishing to deliver the awards are required to come forward for approval and should contact SQA’s Business Development and Customer Support Team for guidance on 0303 333 0330 or e-mail mycentre@sqa.org.uk.

Assessors and verifiers must be able to meet SQA’s general requirements for technical/occupational competence as outlined in the Systems and Qualification Approval Guide.

Specific delivery requirements

Centres should ensure they have the correct equipment to effectively deliver these qualifications. There should be enough equipment to ensure compliance with Health and Safety Executive standards and to cover all learning outcomes and assessment criteria identified in the unit specifications. The training equipment should be sufficient to support the maximum ratio of 12 learners to one trainer.

Trainers, assessors and internal verifiers must be able to meet the requirements of the Assessment Principles for Regulated First Aid Qualifications.

SQA has developed an Assessment Strategy and Guidance for each qualification. This guidance is written in accordance with the Assessment Principles for Regulated First Aid Qualifications. It is designed to assist first aid training providers to gain and maintain SQA approval to deliver, assess and internally verify first aid qualifications. All SQA centres must comply with the Assessment Strategy and Guidance.

Each unit specification gives detailed information on the learning outcomes and the assessment criteria.

The assessment should determine a learner’s ability to act safely, promptly and effectively when an emergency occurs at work and to deal with a casualty. All learning outcomes and assessment criteria in the units must be achieved.

Summative assessment may take place at any time during the delivery of the qualification and does not need to be done as a final assessment. It is, however, a requirement for the learner to be aware that assessment is taking place. Formative assessment may be used during delivery of the qualification but is not to be used in the assessment decisions of competence against the learning outcomes and assessment criteria.

SQA has developed summative assessments for the awards.