Swimming lessons should be essential!

My children’s primary did it in year 3, but I agree that’s much too late. Mine were both already swimmers by that time (despite pandemic interrupting my son’s yr 1 and 2) and I felt sad for those who went into these lessons as non swimmers.

That said, it’s a money thing for many people - yes it should be a priority if you have money for hobbies but some don’t have money for anything beyond food and bills sadly.

I think schools should be funded to offer this from the start, every year of primary. But from the position we’re in now, that’s going to be a long time coming.

See also music lessons for all children throughout primary!

@rwalker but that completely ignores the fact that for many of us the days when you could rock up at the local leisure centre and have a family swim for a few pounds have gone. If I want to take both my children to the pool, I need to have DH with me because of ratios and it’s an absolute fortune, it really is. Berating parents for not doing this reads unpleasantly. There are shit parents, I know that, but for the most part most parents want to do their best for their children.

When I swim I am always amazed at the kids who are having swimming lessons, some of them are tiny little dots but they are so confident in the water, can jump in ( and get out again without using the steps) are taught to dive, to put their heads below the water, breathe properly,swim different strokes etc. I can only do swim like a turtle breast stroke and so wish I had been taught properly when young, I can swim without stopping for an hour so have stamina, but no style!

I agree with the OP, it is the best activity to spend money on.

If parents do enrol children in lessons they see passing stage 4 as the goal when that is the bare minimum of competent and won't lead to your child being able to save themselves in a tricky situation

The number one most important life saving skill in water is not panicking and staying afloat. That's it. If stage 4 covers that, you're statistically unlikely to ever drown. Swimming is good exercise. But it's only essential to be able to swim well if you want to pursue certain watersports, especially sea-sports like surfing. As has been stated already, most people who drown can swim.

Being generally fit and eating well is far, far more important that swimming. Lets put it this way, in the UK an average of 400 people a year die from drowning while 702,880 die from heart disease. Helping a child find a physical activity they love and want to pursue, is far more important than a focus on swimming.

It's also not necessary to learn early. My DS had lessons for a bit age 6, then due to illness followed by lockdowns, he didn't get back in a pool for four years. A year later and he's working on tumble-turns and he's started surfing and wakeboarding. Granted swimming comes more naturally to him than it does to some but the most important factor in him learning was probably being fit and confident from other activities.

Apart from driving all the others listed aren’t essential life skills to equip you for life and tbh you can get by without driving but swimming could save there’s or someone else life

i think my view stems from the amount of parents I know who complained that there kids couldn’t swim but they never took them near a swimming pool

Whilst I fully acknowledge not everyone can teach there kids to swim they’ll get far more from a limited school swimming lesson if they are already water confident and used to the environment of a swimming pool
that the overwhelming majority can do but a lot don’t bother and then complain that there kids can swim after a handful of school swimming lessons these are the people I’m on about

Yes and so many parents write their kids a slip saying they can’t participate.
There was a drowning in our area and the school were puzzled because they had a pool and it was part of their PE, turned out the drowned individual had always had a letter excusing him. Sad

Just to add to this, my five year old can swim better than this (and is stage three) after spending five years doing occasional family fun sessions at a pool and starting six months of lessons earlier this year.

My son has been having lessons since a tiny baby. He is super confident and can swim 10m but messes around in lessons so still stuck k stage 2 at age 6.

If I had paid many hundreds of pounds and spent hundreds of half hours over six years getting a child to swim 10 metres, I would not be impressed.

Personally I think swimming lessons are overrated on Mumsnet - you only need your child to swim a length proficiently, which can be taught easily enough at 5 or 6 if you just let them splash and doggy paddle until then. Most people aren't going to swim competitively and don't need years of levels and badges.

I used to take DS to a weekly activity in the velodrome where instructors would help show him how to ride a bike.

Why - he listens more to others than me 😂 he enjoyed it, it got us out and about and it was a fun thing to do.

It really is OK to pay others to do things you either aren’t good at or just don’t have time for yourself, see also cleaners.

Honestly- this is a bit privileged. My oldest Ds is 14 and his swimming lessons cost £20 a session 10 years ago. Many many people simply do not have that sort of money spare each week.

DH and I teach our children many things and I think it’s perfectly ok to outsource the teaching of anything we can’t or won’t teach. The end result is still a child being taught and that’s the crux for most things.

But what about the people that can't afford to take their children they will not learn to swim. It's got nothing to do with riding a bike that is free even if you borrow a bike. Then again I have heard of people paying someone to teach their children to ride a bike because they don't have time.

Exactly. I agree it's my responsibility as a parent (who has the resources and DCs who are capable) to make sure my children learn to swim. So I send them to lessons. That's not abdicating responsibility, that's meeting it.

Out of interest, are you disparaging about driving lessons, horse riding lessons, football / rugby classes, dance lessons, music lessons?

I really don’t understand (and I don’t mean that in a passive aggressive‘I just can’t possibly understaaaand’ way, I genuinely have no understanding here) of why it is inherently virtuous to teach your children to swim yourself rather than send them to swimming lessons?

Rest my case

All children need to learn to swim- you may try and avoid water most of your life, but there maybe a time when you need it. As not all parents can afford/have time for extra swimming lessons (lets face it, alot of us are working like blue arse flies to keep a roof over our head and food on the table) it should a subsidised school activity from age 5 years onwards. Not a couple of lessons when they are 10 in the hope something sticks.

Good grief that is outrageous!

It is difficult. Our lessons have parent in the pool with the child so I can’t go during the week (I work part time) so has to be weekends and while I don’t begrudge it it definitely cuts into other things. DS’s is fine, it’s first thing on a Saturday but DDs is 1 o clock. Ds has a rugby class middle of the day Sunday too.

But I do really hate the way some people on here are so quick to place blame upon parents. The thread is loaded in it, in parents not taking their children swimming enough even though it costs a fortune, taking them for lessons, not taking them for lessons. It really is a lot of money, and seriously if money is tight then you know eating and paying the mortgage are more important, as much as I endorse swimming as a skill!

Pissed away a fortune in baby swimming.

He learnt to swim when he was strong enough to physically do it.

Not to mention time - we work FT Monday to Friday. Other hobbies on Saturday morning, swimming lessons on Sunday morning. There's not much time in the week for a fun family trip to the pool! Not to mention the pool is mostly booked up with lessons over the weekend (fair enough).

You don’t think there is a correlation between 1 and 3?

This is now my industry and there's so many complex issues happening that effectively the pass rate of a child being able to swim competently by the end of year 4 has fallen dramatically.

1. Parents don't swim with their children outside of lessons.
2. If parents do enrol children in lessons they see passing stage 4 as the goal when that is the bare minimum of competent and won't lead to your child being able to save themselves in a tricky situation
3. Lessons are becoming more and more expensive in large part to energy costs it takes to run Swimming pools.
4. There's a severe shortage in adequately trained swim teachers.
5. We have the covid generation of kids born 2016 to 2019 whose parents never enrolled them at age 4+ so now there is backlog peaking at 8 year old who can't swim at all...this is then putting pressure on school swimming and the curriculum because they can't reach the standard.
6. For the average family two children of school age enrolled in swimming lessons is £70 a month, that's stretch for most.

Kids don't need lessons. Parents need to make it a regular thing from a baby. Swimming and ridding a bike is important. It's really poor if you can't do that for your kids.

I would tend to agree with this. I do think every kid should have the opportunity to learn to swim but lessons aren’t a necessity for that to happen if the priority is teaching them just as life skill rather than a competitive sport.

I’m younger - just going on 40! It just wasn’t really a thing in my cohort - maybe a class/income thing. It was certainly my most middle class friend who had the lessons. But the rest of us could swim just fine.