There are so many subjects taught in school that it’s hard to argue which one is the most important. While every student has some subjects that they enjoy more than others, many are equally important.

While some of us love the structure and universal language that is math, others of us excel at writing, science or history.

We certainly have many memories from our primary school days, but there are also a lot of things we learned that we simply don’t remember anymore since we don’t use those skills every day.

While some things that used to be taught to every student (like cursive) aren’t part of today’s curriculum in many schools, schools in the UK are about to add a very important new item to their students’ lesson plans.

In the UK, it will be mandatory that every student learns CPR and other basic first aid skills. When we think about it, it’s hard to believe that this isn’t already a mandatory part of every student’s education worldwide since these are skills that can actually save someone’s life.

In the UK, 30,000 people suffer from cardiac arrest outside a hospital every single year, and less than 10% of these people survive. In countries where first aid is taught in school, the survival rates double. The hope is that by teaching all students in the UK first aid and CPR basics, many lives will be saved going forward.

Besides CPR, the first aid curriculum will include how to treat common injuries and what defibrillators are for.

According to Education Secretary Damian Hinds, “Learning the basic skills of first aid and techniques like CPR will give young people the confidence to know that they can step in to help someone else in need and in the most extreme cases – it could potentially save a life.”

Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation,thinks that adding first aid to every student’s lesson plan is a “decisive moment in the battle to improve cardiac arrest survival rates, following years of campaigning by the BHF and others.”

All students in the UK will be required to learn CPR and first aid by the year 2020. While students hopefully won’t need to use these new skills very often, we hope that they remember them for life.

What do you think about this move to add CPR and first aid to the curriculum in the UK? Do you know CPR?