to not want to pay for other kids to learn to swim?

[tomdayleymum]

DS about to go into Year 3. Got a letter from school saying that from now til next July Year 3 will be going swimming and please can we have a voluntary contribution of £3.25 per week?

He can swim very well thanks to me paying for him to have private lessons. If other parents haven't bothered (or can't afford) to teach their kids to swim outside of school hours then fine, let the school teach 'em. But I don't want to pay for him to go in school hours when he could do with catching up on his reading instead.

AIBU?

FFS do any of you actually read the threads before you wade in? I said over 24 hours ago that I accepted the opinion of the majority of MN (who had posted) that I was BU?

And I don't understand all the personal attacks on me

And those of you taking a pop at my DS's reading ability - and blaming me for it - he has entered Year 3 as a "free reader" so is at the level he should be. I picked reading out of the air as one of the things that would benefit him more than wasting an afternoon at the pool (and I've already said why I think it's a waste of time and money so forgive me if I don't repeat myself just because some of you can't be bothered to read the whole thread).

OP it's just a trait of AIBU, I think. I wouldn't take it personally at all, people just respond to the initial post and move on. I agree it's annoying, though.

I also think people are ratty because of the long summer holidays and being harsher than usual as a result. Lots of vehemence around atm! Again, I wouldn't take it personally. S'only the internet, and all that.

YABU

The contribution is voluntary and its part of the national curriculum.
Prehaps there needs to be rethink on how children are taught to swim, but it is an important skill and a good use of tax payer's money.

There are lots of reasons why children can't have swimming lessons outside school. In my town its next to impossible to get lessons at the sports centre unless your child starts swimming lesssons as a baby. Some parents have to work and struggle to find time to take their children swimming. Many muslim women do not want to wear a swimming costume or prehaps the child has glue ear and cannot swim for medical reasons when younger.

My son hated school swimming lessons because the groups were so large. There were problems with the sheer range of ablity within the class. However children don't stop having English lessons if they are level 6 in year 5.

thank you, perfectstorm

£3.25 per school weeks (39) is £126.75 over the year

£126.75 x 30 (average school class) is £3802.50 (£3421.80 if 10% dont pay)

And if you are in a school with 3 class intake = £11,407.50 (10,265.40 if 10% dont pay)

Then the time it all takes...

Lets say 1 & half to 2hrs (travel plus changing plus lesson) x 39weeks equates to 58 - 78hours spent on swimming...

Plus the staffing hours... atleast 2 members of staff to accompany them.

The national curriculum standard for achievement is 25 metres by the end of Key Stage 2 (Aged 11).

I know the OP was about whether she should pay when her child could swim but for me its highlight what a HUGE waste of money the swimming element of the NC is. A number of teaching staff on this thread have said that the vast majority of the children could swim already and as such had probably already achieved their required standard.

Swimming is hugely important - I understand that but so important that it drains money from an already stretched school budget?
And the above is what the OP's school deemed 'ok' to ask the parents for - I wonder if they are absorbing some of the costs on top?
My son's school did 12 weeks - on those figures its still a £1170 per class for the 12 weeks and 18-24hours of school time.

It's too much time and money being spent on what is effectively ONE target in one strand of the National Circulum - anyone who has been on PTAs and the like will know that schools are more and more asking PTAs or running fairs to raise money for essential resources like reading schemes and yet they are having to spend money on this!

BTW - you can not opt your child out of swimming without applying to the LEA... I asked but I was told without proof of ability to swim 25m the LEA often said No... which meant school had to find extra staff to support son (ASD & struggling at school).

Madness - OP you may have been unreasonable to not want to pay but NOT reasonable to question it.

Excellent post, Doris - makes me wish I'd posted this thread in Chat where it might have generated a more productive debate

Anyway, I've changed my mind (again!). DS can go swimming with the school but they can whistle for their £3.25. If enough parents like me find their backbone and make a stand then they might rethink the idiocy of their current swimming policy.

Do the school have any choice, though? I mean, if it's LEA mandated then presumably it's something they are forced to do?

Genuine question - I don't know what the answer is, am hoping one of the teachers can tell me.

I appreciate your frustration on one level. I always struggled to afford school swimming, especially when I had 2 in KS2 and it cost over £80 a term. I could have used that £80 for extra dance lessons out of school - something DD1 loved - or for so many other things, and she could swim to the point of diving nicely anyway. It was a struggle to pay and I resented that a bit because state education is supposedly free (and unlike yours they never said it was voluntary although I did know the law).

However, the school don't have a choice in this. They have to take them by law. Yes, it may not be time effective to coach them all down there, but what else can they do? So if all the parents take a stand, as you say, it won't make them rethink their policy because they can't. It just means that your son's school will have even less money in its already overstretched budget to spend on other parts of his education.

So whilst I think YANBU to feel a bit aggrieved, YABVVU not to contribute if you can even remotely afford it.

I think that learning to swim is a life skill and is worth spending 11K to get 90 children to learn how to swim.

To put it in context my son and his cousin were recently rescued off a sand bank by the RNLI. My father in law was supposed to be looking after them, but the two ten year olds got into mischief while he was asleep. It cost the RNLI £2000 to save their lives. I feel guilty because my sister in law and I misjudged my father in law's competence to look after children. We want to pay the RNLI back, but we don't have 2K to hand. We will give the RNLI 2K in installments.

Do you think its a good use of £2000 to save the lives of two ten year olds who got into trouble at the beach? In comparison spending 11K on 90 ten year olds is a drop in the ocean.

There is more to life than literacy or numeracy targets. Even autistic children with learning difficulties need to learn to swim.

I don't think the school can opt out easily if one child in a school can't...

And why would a LA allow them to? After all the schools pay the LA run swimming pools for the lesson and in some areas the transport has to LA approved (so will have a contract with them!)...

There is a real need and call for genuine debate surrounding education - Perfectstorm asks if schools have a choice but to offer it but does not question if the LA has the right to force them?
Academies (who do not follow such nonsense) have more autonomy could decide, on looking at the demographics of their school that 90% of the children can swim 25m and to not offer it - sounds harsh but if that school could then free up money to provide something else, even within PE then it will benefit the majority...
Similarly in a school where over 50% can't swim and to boot a main river runs through the town well I would be arguing that those children need school swimming lessons and need to achieve more than 25m!

Like I say - its not so much begrudging the £3.25 but questioning whether that £3.25 could've utilised elsewhere.

perfectstorm no, the school don't have a choice. They can fund it out of their budget and not ask for contributions (I think ideally what they are meant to do) but schools' finances are so terribly stretched that most ask for something.

My understanding is that, given the current National Curriculum, all LA-controlled schools legally have to offer swimming as it is part of that curriculum.

It is an interesting point about academies. They do not have to offer the NC (which may seem like a good thing until children start emerging with a significantly reduced or biased range of knowledge and skills from such schools .. by which point it will be too late to rectify) so probably don't have to offer swimming, even if none of their children can swim.

I would suspect that rather than academies deciding on the basis of the needs of their children as DSDoris suggests, they will actually decide on the basis of their budgets ... which will probably mean that those schools in areas of greatest need, with the largest number of children who won't go swimming any other way as their parents can't afford lessons, will be the first to drop it...

Primary schools 'failing to honour swimming obligations'

Turning this quote around

"The survey responses also suggested that of the children who could not swim, 39% had never been offered school swimming lessons."

Over half of the non-swimmers still could not swim despite school swimming lessons.

ReallyTired - could the two boys swim? I'm not quite getting the connection you're trying to make.

One school my Dc once went to just sent out a form asking the y6 parents whether their children could swim 25m or not and when they got back the forms all yesses (and I would imaginet 10 and 11 yo s who can'r are few and far between) they said they didn't need to do swimming lessons because al the children met the NC goal.

catwoo,

It will deend a lot on your catchment. We take Year 3 and 4 swimming, and every year between a third and a half of the Year 3s cannot swim, with at least a quarter having never been taken to any swimming pool ever.

If we didn't do swimming until Year 6, then the figures would be pretty much identical at that point, as there is no reason why parents who have never taken their 7 or 8 year old child swimming would turn round when they are 10 and say 'oh yes, time to take you swimming / get you some swimming lessons'.

We basically have 4 groups, each about a quarter of the cohort:

• Never been in a swimming pool before being taken with school.
• Been to pool a few times with family and friends, no formal teaching.
• Done a few swimming lessons, parents stopped paying once able to swim a width or a length.
• have had regular swimming lessons from a young age and still taught.

Thanks for those responses, that was pretty much what I thought would be the case.

Does seem like this needs addressing. I only ever learned to doggypaddle/backstroke at school, too (though I could doggypaddle for 200 metres, which at least would avoid drowning unless currents were strong). Am pondering some proper classes for me and DS, actually, given his chances of being able to use a chlorinated pool by 8 are low. Might make swimming more enjoyable.

Leaving aside the bunfights this has been a really interesting thread, so thanks for that, teachers and OP!

i am very glad that the primary my children attends has its own pool. it was funded many years ago via the pta and local businesses. the upkeep is paid for by the pta and the school and a qualified swimming teacher comes to teach the children. al children swim once a week from reception right through to the end of yr six. parents have a rota to help.out. no payment is made tho we have to buy swim hats at £1 each from the school.

the pool is rented out to clubs etc after school.and at wkends to help pay for the costs and i can pay for them to.have ectra lessons after school if i want. i woukd say they havent always made great progress in their school lessons but just having the opportunity to go swimming every week and learm basic skills about water safety and confidence in the water is great ime.

swimming is a life skill and at least schools are trying. it would be good if there was mire consistency across the board in helping children learn to swim.

Also found that article interesting, as it says only 25% of children have private swimming lessons.

That means that, on a first reading, 41% of children learn to swim to the required NC standard with school, as 2/3 of children do achieve the NC standard when they leave primary school.

Which seems slightly at odds with the posts on this thread which suggest that non-swimming children do not learn to swim through school swimming lessons.

Well, coming to this late I do think the money is expensive. Ours went for a term in y4 and we had to pay about a pound per week (tenner for the term).

I was happy with that as were all the other mums and dads whose kids could actually swim (I'd just paid for private lessons for ds - which cost a packet - but at least he can swim basically, if not very well)

I would not expect the school to teach him to swim, if he could not. So it was luckily just in time.

I don't think the school is teaching them to swim tbh - even in your case. They will not be trained properly (unless I missed that bit) and he will basically be having a bit of practise.

Which means it's expensive in my opinion. Can you talk to them and ask if he could stay at school and do something else - or does he really want to join in ? It is a dilemma if he would feel left out but I think this sort of thing should be optional. That's about half the maintenance we get for ds from his father...and we couldn't afford it.

Not necessarily, I would imagine a number are taught by parents/family

I never had lessons outside school, but could swim 100 odd metres when I started at school, too. My granny lived by the Sussex coast so we went swimming there quite often, more than pools which were only very occasional weekend options as my mother worked fulltime. And my father swims like a fish (Australian, lives on the coast and always has) but hasn't ever had a class in his life. Doesn't take formal lessons to get you to swim, no. But it does make you swim more efficiently I think? My swimming is paddley and awkward.

I do wish we'd been taught by someone qualified. Was still worth it in that I definitely was stronger by the time I stopped school classes, but I don't know the proper strokes. If a school can provide that level of tuition to all I think it would be worth the public investment.

Our school do a lot of things with dogs. God knows why. There is some doggy group in at least once every few terms. PAT, The Guide Dog training people, Dogs Trust and some kind of dog/child safety people, they all come in at least once a year to teach the children about what they do and how to be safe around dogs.

I could insist that my children be excluded from these visits and be made to read instead. I volunteer with a local rescue, my children help also. I could also refuse to give the children money to donate towards the charity visiting. There is very little these people could teach my children that they do not already know. We already donate both time and money to dog related charities.

I don't stop them though and I do donate. Children are not happy when they are singled out as different from their peer group. Plus these assemblies are the only ones that shy dd1 will contribute to because she knows she has the right answer. It gives her a massive confidence boost to realise that there is something she is very good at.

She will start swimming this year. She can already swim. We live near a beach, we walk the dogs there, she swims out into the sea with them. She will still do the swimming lessons. I will still pay. For reasons outlined above. 1) she will be over the moon that there is something she is better at then most of her peer group, it will boost her confidence. 2) She would be mortified if she was singled out from her friends. 3) what harm would extra exercise do?