Swimming lessons at school and out of school?

[Methodlem]

DC is in year 3 and is average in terms of swimming ability (as far as I can judge. Most children in their class appear to be about age 7).

If your child does swimming lessons at school do they also do them out of school? DC doesn't love them and they do take up a whole evening so we can't relax/ do homework etc.

I should also add that with ours, the price of lessons is covered by the monthly gym membership.

@Ewetoo I’d forget about badges and focus on them learning to swim with good technique.

The instructor I used works at a local hotel swimming pool (plus other venues) and DS could only manage to swim about 3 metres when he began lessons with her and had no confidence at all. He has dyspraxia and zero sense of direction.
I was paying €30 per lesson and he had 6 lessons of 40 mins. in total. He learnt front crawl, back stroke and gave up with breast stroke as he found it too difficult to co-ordinate his arms and legs properly.

When we visited London in the summer, he was excited to swim in the 50m Olympic pool in Stratford.

I see it as a life skill. I don't think bring able to doggy paddle cuts it, I want DC to be a really strong swimmer and very confident in the water. I realise that takes years, but for me it is a safety issue and it can't be just left to school lessons.

We don't control how many times a school chooses to bring the dc. It's depends on how many intakes they have. For example we had one school Year 3s who went 4 times with the same year group that year. I actually taught majority of them in learn to swim. The progression was amazing the swimmer groups increased everytime due to the school being them and booking them on so many times. Alot were 100 metre plus swimmers by the end. What helped was they already attended lessons and parents took them in the free time aswell.

We will have some schools they will book one year group in once and think that's enough we are not miracle workers. It's also up to parents to encourage swimming and take them to the pool. School Swimming is a stepping stone but having private lessons also increases their ability considerably. It's easy for parents to say school swimming is crap without actually seeing what we do or encouraging swimming outside of school.

I've got a similar dilemma.
DS is 7 and he's been having swimming lessons for 3 years. He can swim and is confident in the water.
He moved up a stage this week and his first class was awful. The teacher made no acknowledgment that it was his first class and expected him to know what he was doing. It was a HUGE step up from his previous stage and I could see straight away he was out of his depth.
He got into trouble in the middle of the pool and panicked - he told me he thought he was going to drown ( a bit of 7 year old dramatics but it wasn't great to watch)
I had to go down to pool side to calm him down.
I've decided not to take him back to that class.

He starts school lessons this year and I'm wondering if that's now enough or if I need to sort lessons out elsewhere 🤷🏼‍♀️

I think you just have to ask yourself are you happy with the level of swimming of your child?

When I was at school, the school has a pool and we had regular swimming in PE lessons. I can easily swim lengths and lengths in three strokes. But I'm a terrible swimmer. My strokes are inefficient and I'm painfully slow compared to those who can swim well. I won't take DCs out of private lessons until they want to stop or have achieved stage 7.

Also, being able to swim 100 or 200m is meaningless. It just means they have stamina. You can easily dog paddle 8 lengths of the pool if you know how to breath.

"Our school doesn't offer swimming lessons"

It's in the national curriculum isn't it?

My personal opinion is that its better to either 1)not be able to swim and stay away from the water or 2) be a very good, strong and capable swimmer.

I think it’s the people who are in between, who think they can swim after a term of school lessons who are really quite dangerous in water.

I see it in our local pool all the time. Absolutely dreadful, borderline dangerous swimming. Definitely wouldn’t be able to cope if anything went wrong. Then taking their children into the deep end on the basis that ‘they can all swim’ when in reality they can just about ‘not drown’.

And absolutely zero pool etiquette (which I appreciate should be better managed by the pool attendants).

So no, on the basis of what I see weekly, keep up the additional lessons.

We do both. I’ve been a helper at the school swimming lessons and it’s usually one teacher for 15 kids (half the class at a time) and is basically just teaching them to be used to the water rather than actually teaching them to swim as such - this was in reception. The lessons DS does at the local pool have 4 kids per teacher who is in the water with them teaching them proper breathing techniques etc.

I don’t understand how the lessons would take up a whole evening though. Just sign up for one straight after school, they are usually less than an hour long. It’s an important life skill not just a fun ‘extra’ activity.

BringOnSummerHolidays
We don't pass them for 100metres doggy paddle they have to swim front crawl breathing to the side. What made you think they do doggy paddle it's not effective and makes it harder to swim.

That sounds promising, I'd love mine to do the swim club when they're allowed eventually just to keep up that weekly practice. We don't have access to a pool except for when on hols unfortunately. Family swim was cut at our leisure centre as so many kids needed lessons post covid & they couldn't cope with the backlog so quite understandably family swim had to go...

We only do the school lessons because they’re really good- once a week from reception and a max of 5 children per instructor. If the school lessons were not great and/or infrequent then I’d keep up with the extra ones.

@BatteryPoweredMammy that sounds great! Unfortunately I have to pay for three to do the group classes ( 7 in group) 120 quid per child for 10 lessons, no sibling discount!

My DC went to lessons until they got all 6 water skills badges.

@Snugglemonkey i feel the same. I want my dc to be able to travel when they're older, be very strong confident swimmers, have a respect for the water & excellent water safety awareness.

@Bananarama21 I don’t know what school you work at so possible yours have higher standards. My DC1 got the 100m from school (instructor from a local leisure centre), when she was year 4 and her front crawl and breast stroke were both worse than mine. I learned at school myself and my school had a pool with regular lessons.

DC1 swims with private lessons too and now is much better than me. I am happy with the level she is swimming at. I am not happy with mine. I am simply stating my own experience of large group lessons and I would have preferred if my parents took me to private lessons too. Funny thing is my mum thought I swim well!

There's no public pool in my area! It's 40 miles away & the local leisure centre where my dc attend is private only.
They do water safety awareness in class, that's all the school can do with the limitations.

@Bananarama21 i can breath on the side with front crawl. I don’t think that’s an indication of swimming the stroke up to standard? DC1 says my hands do not enter the water at the correct angle, my legs do not kick well and I turn sideways too much.

I don’t know if she’s correct but she is smaller than me and swims a lot faster. I gather than means her strokes are more efficient.

@Ewetoo i know it’s a scandal isn’t it? There aren’t enough council pools around. Many are closing due to lack of funding too.

I read an article yesterday saying loads of swimming pools in France are closing down as they can't heat the pools due to rising energy costs...
@BringOnSummerHolidays it's a disgrace, luckily we can just about afford the lessons but many can't so their children are missing out big time. Noone in their right mind is going to do an 80 mile round trip to the nearest public pool.. Even as it is our local leisure centre where the dc go has a huge waiting list, my niece is no 52 on the level 1 list & she is available to go any day of the week but the list is barely moving... She's 8.

Ours did lessons at the local leisure centre. I don't think that a term of lessons at school is enough to teach them to swim. I would say that both improved massively during the term they did school lessons though and learnt skills not taught in their private lessons so I wouldn't write them off completely.

www.euronews.com/2022/09/06/energy-crisis-france-closes-30-swimming-pools-amid-soaring-heating-bills

@BringOnSummerHolidays

Mine did. School lessons were normal in a block of 10 weeks or something and was for 15 kids at a time so they didn't get much done whereas their out of school lessons were all year round and smaller classes. At £4 a session I didn't mind once a week of wasting my evening waiting around for a swimming lesson and rushing a crap dinner. I'd rather my kid was a fantastic swimmer as it could potentially save their life one day.

Yes. School swimming lessons are pretty much a waste of time. Unless your school has its own pool and lessons aren't once a week for half a term.