Why can’t everyone swim???

[GorgeousFox]

Am interested in understanding what is stopping children from learning to swim? Is it the cost, lack of facilities, time constraints, something else?????

Majority of population identify as Christian on Census see ONS. Just - 51%.

Swim teacher jobs (about £15 per hour average) work well for students and those who just need a few hours’ work and earnings. They don’t work for those who need full time hours.

Most swim schools offer some hours after school and weekend classes. This is when kids are available. Even by working at a couple of different swim schools, it doesn’t provide enough hours to keep a household running.

You tend to get some ‘older’ swim teachers who have done it for years and do a few hours as they love it and want to earn a little bit of cash, and then lots of teens and students who are working flexibly around their studies.

Lifeguards earn less (£10 on average) but can get the hours more easily in community pools which are open to public when swimming lessons not happening, and doing general leisure centre work. Again, many are students working around their studies.

Training to be a lifeguard costs about £300 and to be a fully qualified swim teacher, around £1k. Some places will pay for staff to be trained as the state of recruitment is so bad.

If training was fully funded and wages increased a bit, supply of staff would rise….but then so would the price of lessons.

Its a good job for students, even as young as 16 and better laid than shop work. But the turnover is high as many do it for a year or two and then don’t continue as they get their degree or move into full time work. Pools need to keep recruiting and training constantly. Covid meant many lifeguards saw their qualifications expire and didn’t renew them. Many swim teachers left to do other things.

Course/ lesson structure is a good point.
There is a case to be made for a water confidence programme that concentrates on skills and basic stamina in the water before finesse of technical strokes. Being technically good will get you swimming longer distances so is of value but a lot of people don't aspire to that and swimming lessons clog up because a child can get themselves 10m/25m but not to a prescribed standard and it's reaching that standard in breast/ crawl/ back/ butterfly that causes slow progression and frustration.

Swimming is worth learning because it's potentially one of the most inclusive sports/ activities for all ages/ disability/ injury. Go to a daytime lanes/ aquafit session and it will be filled with people that would struggle to participate in most other forms of exercise.

I never learned because I hated it.

I hated everything about it from the smell of the chemicals and the lack of privacy, the cold water and being forced to put my face in the water.

School swimming lessons were sheer torture and despite having my first lessons in infants school (school had its own indoor pool - unheated ) and progressing all the way through with compulsory swimming lessons even in secondary school I am still unable to swim even a width nor can I float.

DP can swim - I honestly don't know about the DC though. I know they had lessons.

I'm a school swimming teacher and it is so worrying how many children cannot swim, it is a life skill. Those that day they avoid water can't always be so certain. My ex bf at university got so intoxicated he lost his friends after getting kicked out of the pub. He made his way home alone the river bank of the river ooze in York. He fell in, he's body was found weeks later. He never intented to get into trouble and didn't see the danger as he had walked that way home many times. Just a preventable tragedy.

I couldn't swim until I was about 10. A that age we moved (abroad) to a house with access to a private pool. At that point a couple of the Dads took it upon themsleves to teach all the kids to swim.

We lived there for 2 years and daily access to a warm, clean pool right out our back door soon meant I was a confident swimmer. But if we'd not have moved, maybe I never would have been.

I’m sorry if this sounds insensitive but the fact that he was drunk is a big factor in that example. Even if you are an excellent swimmer, you are much more likely to fall into water like that if you’re intoxicated and much less likely to be able to save yourself.

Michael Phelps would probably drown if he was so drunk he fell into a river alone at night.

My 5yo FC has had precisely 5 lessons. She has gone from sinking in lesson 1 to now being a swimmer on front and back.

It's such a shame to give up on your child because 'they don't like it'. There are so many things we insist our children do or have done to them, and their view point is frankly irrelevant.

I think the main problem is that the parents don't like the lessons. I hate them, but drag myself each week.

I had 10 years+ of forced swimming lessons and as I said still can't swim so that worked well didn't it?

All it did for me was to teach me to hate the water. And hate it I do.

Are you suggesting we give up on all children?

I didn't just "not like it!". I was terrified. My parents would take me to the pool, and I would just stand there crying. All this pushing heads underwater etc just added to to. Even now, I have to wash my hair over the bath. I can not deal with water in my face at all. Those attempts at forcing me to try and swim as a kid has had a massive impact on me as an adult.

I can not deal with water in my face at all.

Yes same here. I don't wash my hair in the shower either as I hate the feeling of water on my face.

00100001 swimming lessons down just teach you to swim they also educate you on the dangers of water in particular school swimming where we talk about water safety. I find your post pretty rude given the circumstances in which I described

For me personally, no access to a pool in primary. Started lessons in secondary but I was very fearful of the water.
PE teacher decided we were to dive in and retrieve a brick. I was hesitant because I was fearful, so she kindly pushed me in, whereby my face hit the water, my nose poured of blood and I hastily grabbed the side and left.

From that day on I either bunked the lesson or made an excuse I was on my period. To this day I’m still terrified of water on my face. I can swim a little but won’t go in any part of the pool where I can’t touch the floor.

i was treated exactly the same as a child. Spent the first 45 years of my life terrified of water as a direct result. I then needed to exercise and so went to the local pool each day.10 years on can swim 2 miles front crawl in pool or beach and am happy underwater. That said, the thought of diving in still scares me.
I think it would be easier if I had not built up a fear of water as a child. Hence me thinking about how I can help kids to learn early. Thank you for replying to me, I thought my est years experience was unique. (I also painted very as on my feet to skip swim lessons)