Swim lessons for son

[Nwood8]

I’m just wondering what’s the best way to address my sons progression in his swimming lessons. He’s at stage 4. He’s arguable the best swimmer in the group and has been for a while. However, other children who can’t swim as well as him are being moved up. I’m not a swim instructor so appreciate there are things they look for but even other parents in the group are baffled at it. He’s well behaved and works hard. So it’s not his attitude. I don’t want to come across as rude and tell them how to do their job but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Have you asked the instructor why they're not moving him up? Could there be one stroke/ skill he can't get the hang of?

Ask?

Do they have progress updates? My DD's swim school had an app where instructors ticked off the skills as they were achieved. On grade 7 she was at 93% for a month and when I queried it I was told that it was because they had a lot of new people so we're going through the basics again. I was quite cross at this and they agreed to check the skills the following week. Lo and behold she passed everything. We left after that. I got the impression they were holding on for the money.

I noticed the same with my two boys having not been moved after three seasons of being at the same level so u questioned it and next session they were both moved. I think there was an element of money and perhaps trying to align when they could both move to classes that worked time wise.
Raise it with the instructor or directly email the swim school and query.

Why haven’t you asked the instructor? They’re going to have a better idea of why he hasn’t been moved up than complete strangers on the internet.

They don’t have an app. A different teacher does an assessment on them for the last two session of the course and decides. I wouldn’t argue with the decision if other children who clearly weren't as confident as my son were progressing. It only happened yesterday and I was in a rush to get home. That’s why I hadn’t asked but wasn’t sure how to approach it without sounding like I know more than them - Which at this point I feel like I do.

Ask.

Normally there is a tick list of skills that they need yo demonstrate to move up.

Sometimes stuff like being able to float in a mushroom for 15 secs will stop an otherwise good swimmer from moving up.

If you ask you will know what you need to work on.

I will ask. Thank you! They literally just ask them to front crawl from one end to the other. They do other skills during the lesson which he is awesome at but for the assessments they literally watch them front crawl across the pool. No notes are made by the instructors who are in the pool with them. It seems really old school.

Do you think he's learning anything in his lessons, or stagnating?
If he's not learning ask to move to a different instructor or indeed a different provider.

Mine was stuck on 97% for ages in stage 4. Then did stage 5 in 6 weeks since she had ended u learning it all there instead...

I could see something similar happening. They’d do the width of the pool at the moment and stage 5 they move to lengths. He’d definitely benefit more from swimming lengths. I’ll ring them later and see what they suggest. I’m due to make a 10 week payment next Tuesday. So reluctant to pay if I’m not happy and want to move him to a different provider. Thank you for the advice!