There’s a particular file in every nursery office that only gets opened when something prompts it: the first aid certificates. Open it this week and you may find what plenty of managers find in early June. One certificate expiring in August, right in the middle of the holiday rota. Another belonging to someone who left at Easter. And a new apprentice starting in September who has no paediatric first aid training at all yet.
June is quietly the best month of the year to sort all of this out, and here’s why.
Why June is the month to audit certificates
The EYFS requires that someone with a full paediatric first aid certificate is on the premises and available at all times when children are present, and accompanies children on outings. That’s easy to satisfy on a fully staffed Tuesday in term time. It gets harder in August, when annual leave thins every rota, and harder again in September, when new starters arrive and rooms get reshuffled.
Paediatric first aid certificates last three years and have a talent for expiring at awkward moments. An audit now gives you time to book renewals before the summer bites, rather than discovering in the last week of August that your only qualified cover for the baby room is on a beach in Portugal.
While the file is open, look at depth as well as dates. If only one person in the building holds the certificate, every one of their days off becomes a compliance question. Most settings settle on a comfortable margin of trained staff per room, so that holidays, sickness and outings never leave a gap, and so that new starters joining in September have cover in place while they complete their own training.
Hands-on is the point
Paediatric first aid is not a subject that can be learned entirely from a screen, and honest providers say so plainly. You can learn the theory of infant CPR online. You cannot learn what it feels like: the two-finger compressions on an infant manikin, the head position that actually opens a tiny airway, the back blows delivered with enough conviction to matter. When a child is choking on a grape at snack time, nobody rises to the occasion; they fall back on what their hands have practised. A practical day also irons out the habits that drift in the years between courses, which happens to everyone.
That’s why our Paediatric First Aid course is a blended, face-to-face qualification rather than a purely online one. It’s delivered by our sister company, National Compliance Training, and it fully meets the EYFS requirement for paediatric first aid.
How the blended course works
The structure is designed around nursery staffing reality. The theory is covered through self-paced e-learning, which staff complete on any device, at whatever hours the week allows. Then comes the part that matters most: a practical classroom day, hands on manikins, with a trainer watching and correcting technique until it’s right.
Blended delivery keeps staff out of the setting for one day instead of two or three, which makes cover arrangements far less painful. For managers booking several team members, it also means the whole group can work through the theory in advance and arrive at the practical day ready to practise rather than ready to be lectured.
Live dates, venues and prices are on the course page, and on-site training can be arranged for settings that would rather bring the practical day to their own premises. If you’re planning around a September intake, the arithmetic is simple: count backwards from the first week of term, allow for the e-learning, and book the practical day before the summer diaries fill up.
Get every room covered before September arrives
The blended Paediatric First Aid qualification combines self-paced e-learning with a hands-on practical classroom day, delivered by our sister company NCT, and fully meets the EYFS requirement.
The certificates file is a dull place to spend twenty minutes in June. It’s a far better place to find a problem than the accident book is in August.