(my first thoughts on learning to swim written in 2018)
An interesting article by Simon Griffiths, writing in his magazine Outdoor Swimmer, on children swimming and the model that the Dutch use in Amsterdam made me think about how we can get more people swimming. In his article Simon claims that it is a scandal that only 49% of children in England leave state school able to swim, despite it being on the National Curriculum for Key Stage 2 that every child should learn to swim 25m, but does this tell the whole story?
Simon’s article seems to me to be a complaint about schools not teaching the children to swim.
As ever, when children do not achieve, it is that schools & teachers are not trying hard enough. However, schools in England at Primary level have external problems to overcome when it comes to swimming. The most serious being the fact that we do not have enough water to go round. This means that either the local authority refuses to give the children proper access to the swimming pools, the cost is prohibitive or we do not have enough swimming pools.
Children not learning to swim is a symptom of not having proper access to water, for whatever reason. Unlike Amsterdam our local government does not assist our children in learning to swim either through funding or availability.
I recognise that this is not easy as at our leisure centre in Congleton, Cheshire over 2,000 children arrive for school swimming lessons each week.
The children need to have better access to water; let me give you an example of the impact of better access.
My wife is a Primary School Headteacher and she puts massive efforts into getting all her children in Key Stage 2 being able to swim 25m or more before they leave her school.
A few years ago, frustrated at the cost of swimming, she stopped hiring a bus to take the children to the swimming pool, the children now use a “walking bus”. This saved over £3,500 each year and that money saved was put into extra time at the pool for the children – she had to work extremely hard to get the leisure centre to give the extra time but they eventually relented and it has worked but it is still difficult getting all children to learn as the school still restricted on time in the water
But learning to swim 25 metres is not enough, we need to be encouraging our children to take the Survival Awards. These need to be available to everyone and not just through swimming clubs that can cost hundreds of pounds each year.
So, how do we get our children swimming when they cannot get access to water to swim in?
Roger Deakin alluded to an answer in Waterlog when writing about a remote junction between Swaffham Lode and the Cam:
“Thirty years ago, the whole village used to come out to the farm to picnic and swim in the river in summer.”
To start the ball rolling this is my list of what needs doing to get our children swimming:
We should be building swimming pools in our schools. Not one of the 15 schools in Congleton has a swimming pool when at least two of our Primary schools and one of our two secondary schools should have one.
We need to go back to natural swimming areas. Congleton has the River Dane running through the town and it has an old boating facility on the river that is unused and which sits in the town park – this could be opened for swimming in the summer.
We need to show our children how brilliant swimming is. Each year my wife takes a group of year 6 children to the Nantwich Outdoor Brine Pool and every year they can’t believe that there is an outdoor, HEATED swimming pool close to our town.
We need more swimming teachers and volunteers to teach swimming. I am enrolled on a teach to swim course, this will enable more time for each child, encouraging them to swim as I will volunteer some of my time each week at my wife’s school.
Children need to be able to learn & swim for free. Whilst swimming lessons at school are generally free, lessons outside of school are not.
I want to start something that gets our children swimming: free lessons, more dedicated time in pools, free access to swimming clubs, education in schools about water safety BUT above all else we need more water.