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For parents and general life skills, the free tier is genuinely good: St John Ambulance and Red Cross publish full free guidance and apps, community groups and children's centres run free baby-CPR sessions, and libraries host taster sessions: the paid course adds the thing videos can't: hands on a manikin with an instructor correcting your compression depth. For WORKPLACES the certificate is the product: EFAW (1 day) or FAW (3 days) per your first-aid needs assessment: certificates last 3 years: employers pay, not employees.
What The First Aid Course Calculator Works Out
- Cost: the course price multiplied by the people attending. Half-day basic life support runs about GBP 40, the one-day Emergency First Aid at Work GBP 80 to GBP 120, the three-day First Aid at Work GBP 220 to GBP 280, parent sessions GBP 30 to GBP 45 and the 12-hour paediatric qualification GBP 130 to GBP 170.
- Free and cheap routes: for parents, St John Ambulance and Red Cross guides and apps, free baby-CPR sessions at children's centres and defib-awareness sessions are genuinely good; the paid course adds manikin time with an instructor correcting compression depth. For workplaces the needs assessment decides EFAW or FAW and the employer pays in work time.
- Choosing well: groups of twelve or fewer, sessions weighted to practice over talk, current-guideline instructors, and paediatric syllabuses that cover choking, CPR, febrile seizures and burns. Childcare settings should check the regulator's wording before booking anything shorter than the 12-hour course.
- Quoted price per person (advanced): override the typical prices with the quote you actually have.
- On-site vs per head (advanced): a trainer visiting your premises charges a flat fee (often GBP 500 to GBP 900) for up to about 12 people. The card works out how many visits your group needs and whether that beats per-head booking; at six-plus attendees it usually does.
- Including time and travel (advanced): the course hours multiplied by the hourly cost of each person's time, plus travel, added to the training fee. For employers the wages of a dozen staff for a day usually exceed the course itself.
- Per person per year and whole certificate cycle (advanced): the full cost spread over the certificate's validity (three years for workplace certificates) with any annual refreshers added. Skills decay in months, so the recommended annual refresher matters more than initial certificate grandeur.
- Per hour of training (advanced): the course price divided by its length, a fair comparison between a GBP 35 two-hour parent session and a GBP 100 six-hour EFAW day. Two trained adults in a home cover the scenario where the trained one is the casualty.