For the first time, schools in England, UK, will be required to provide allergy awareness training for all staff, under new statutory guidance unveiled by the Department for Education.
The guidance also mandates that schools keep spare adrenaline auto-injectors on site for emergencies involving children who do not yet have a diagnosed allergy.
The new measures come after cross-party backing for Benedict’s Law, a campaign aimed at enhancing allergy safety in schools and ensuring life-saving protections for children with food allergies and anaphylaxis.
However, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the school leaders’ union NAHT, cautioned that every aspect of the guidance requires proper funding. “Schools cannot be expected to fund from their budgets,” he said.
Early education minister Olivia Bailey responded, stating, “Lots of schools in the country already have great policies in place and are already doing a lot of this. It is something which we think is reasonable for schools to pay for out of core budgets. We are committed to working with schools to make that as easy as possible.”
The guidance is part of a broader government effort to reform the school food system and extend free school meals to an additional 500,000 children starting this September.
The campaign is named in memory of five-year-old Benedict Blythe from Stamford, Lincolnshire, who tragically died after an anaphylactic reaction at school in December 2021.
His mother, Helen Blythe, who has campaigned alongside the National Allergy Strategy Group, called the announcement “a really significant day.” She described a “catalogue of errors” that led to her son being given milk containing cow’s milk protein despite his allergy being on record.
An inquest into Benedict’s death revealed the school failed to identify his symptoms in time, delaying the administration of life-saving medication.
“We don’t want any other families to go through what we’ve been through,” Helen Blythe said. “The experience of having an allergic reaction is really distressing and we want to guard against that wherever possible.”
According to the DfE, 500,000 days of learning were lost last year due to allergy-related illnesses or medical appointments. Officials hope the new guidance will not only save lives but also keep more children in school.
Helen Houghton, headteacher of Warter Primary School in East Yorkshire, described the new rules as “fundamental.” She said about 5% of her pupils have allergies, some of which are “quite complex” to manage.
In response, her school has directed part of its budget to additional staff training and allergy equipment.
“It’s a small amount to have them there and make sure everyone is safe,” Houghton said, noting she meets with parents to develop personalised medical plans for children with allergies.
“It must be terrifying to be a parent or a child with allergies, and I think certainly for the school it’s about keeping our systems incredibly tight, incredibly consistent, and having a whole-school collective responsibility. It’s so important to help reassure parents here that their children are safe,” she added.
While some schools like Warter Primary already have allergy plans, the new guidance makes such measures compulsory across all schools in England, UK.
A 2024 freedom of information request by the Benedict Blythe Foundation found that 70% of schools lacked recommended allergy safeguards, and half did not have adrenaline pens or spare auto-injectors on site.
Whiteman welcomed the guidance, saying, “The expected guidance and advice is clearly welcome because it should provide more comprehensive information for schools to ensure they can continue to support all pupils in their education, including those with health conditions. Schools want to be as inclusive as possible while also ensuring they can continue to fulfil their safeguarding duty and keep every child as safe as possible whilst in their setting.”
Houghton emphasized that managing allergies in schools is as much about creating a safe culture as it is about education. “We make sure that the resources we buy for the wider curriculum subjects, or for science experiments, are allergy-safe too,” she said.
Blythe believes the changes could be life-saving. “This is the first generation of children that will be starting school in September who will be in an environment that will be completely safe for them in terms of those allergy safeguards being in place and that’s a kind of exciting and magical thing,” she told the BBC
Parents, teachers, and experts are now invited to share their views on the proposals before they take effect in September.
