Cost of school swimming lessons

[Coffeeandtats]

My son is in year 4 and attends a mainstream school which is part of a multi academy trust

They’re due to start swimming lessons after Easter and the letter which came home said the cost of this, including the instructor and transport to and from the venue, for the 9 weeks of lessons will be £62

As I understood it, because swimming is part of the national curriculum, they can’t make you pay for the lessons, but they can ask for a voluntary contribution from parents

AIBU to think £62 is absolutely taking the piss?

I agree with pp saying school lessons were crap
Dd had 7 i think. 6 in y3. 1 in yr 5. Should have been at least 12 but thats still not enough.
Ours were free. But school tested them in the 1 y5 one and decided dc passed. (She hadnt swim un months and only on holiday for 10days in 18m). I then put dc into a crash course for stage 3 (which she had been on for 6m pre covid) and they didnt pass her. Despite school deciding she needs no more lessons...
Anyway her friends has never had lessons and they still have to go but with covid and everything i think 3 extra lessons. Y3 and y4 have had no lessons at all yet so are both behind.
Very few kids will get to a reasonable standard with school lessons alone.
Dd had done maybe 18m of leisure centre lessons.
I think unfortunately incentive are conflicting
School want to say kids passed
Private lessons want money coming in. Ours told us dc couldnt move up to 4 as she wasnt breathing right! I think it needs restructuring. As also there seems a bulge of kids stuck on lower levels.

@caringcarer

I think it makes more sense to just take kids that can't swim 10 metres. The rest could stay in school and get on with other work. My FS was already an excellent swimmer and swam competitively so he and several others just got told to swim up and down different strokes for their lesson whilst teacher focused in non swimmers but for safety they still had to have a TA sat watching them. More sense to have swimmers left in school and TA get in water with non swimmers too.

That is what DDs school did for Yr6 (who didn't get swimming in Yr4 or Yr5 due to Covid). Usually each class gets half a term, but they took the non swimmers instead for a whole term. Disappointing for the others (especially the ones just above the cut off) but it was a more sensible distribution of resources really.

DD1 is in y4 and doing school swimming at the moment - it's free but they're only getting it fortnightly for half a term - so three lessons.

We pay at our local leisure centre; £26 a month for weekly lessons which run all year around except Easter and Christmas.

HSHorror

Learn to swim criteria is higher than school swimming which is to get to a to b.

What’s the difference between swimming in the national curriculum and the Swim England Learn to Swim Programme?
Don’t give up on your regular swimming lessons once your child starts swimming lessons with school.

This is crucial to their continued development and ultimately safety. The national curriculum framework is designed to build water confidence and safety, rather than stroke technique.

We recommend you continue with your regular private lessons at the same time as the school swimming lessons. This is because your child will be taught more in-depth skills and techniques in regular lessons than they will at school. The aim of school swimming and water safety lessons during physical education, are to teach your child to be safe in and around water, with the emphasis on water safety. Regular lessons progress way past the minimum national curriculum requirements and continue their aquatic education towards an active and healthy future

YANBU. I really believe that swimming is an important skill to learn and I’m embarrassed to say that mine can’t. We couldn’t afford private lessons and the cost of regular swimming as a family was equally as prohibitive.
Whilst we didn’t have to contribute towards school lessons, the focus (for ours at least) seemed to be on improving the ability of those that already had the basic skills. The non-swimmers in the class were still non-swimmers at the end of the short block of swimming sessions.

Sounds about right if you took your child yourself

@Imnoteatingthat thats a real shame that they didnt focus on the non- swimmers. Its supposed to be for all kids- so every child can swim 25m. My kids school ensured all could swim at least a width at the end of the swim lesson allocation- might be too late for your children that have already had their lessons- but if you have any that havent as yet, I'd deffo mention your concerns to the school.

Worth bearing in mind too that some swimming clubs offer bursarys for their swimming lessons too- so local authority pools and places like Better- arent the only option- and swim clubs could end up in fact a better financial option...

School swimming isn't really a replacement for external lessons. In many areas you only get a couple of terms worth, it wont actually get a total non swimmer swimming capably.

£6 a lesson is much cheaper than private lessons. Given it includes transport I wouldmt complain. Just don't agree to pay if you truly can't afford it - but know that the cost might even be that high because they know only half or two thirds of parents will agree to pay at all

What other schools do is really irrelevant.

Some schools will get the use of a private school pool for free as part of their ‘giving back to the community’ initiative. Some schools will have to pay to hire out the local leisure centre, which costs money.

Some schools will live right next to a pool and can walk which is free. Some schools will need bus children, which costs a fortune no matter how far the distance is. Even if it’s a mile, it will cost hundreds. My school buses 3-5 children and 3 staff to a pool just over a mile away (the rest meet us there as it’s the first lesson). The bus for those 3 children costs £50! Then all the kids are bussed back which costs about £150-200.

Some schools will have teachers who happen to be qualified swimming teachers, others will have to pay for swim coaches as the average primary school teacher won’t have a clue how to teach swimming.

Those of you quit in private swim lessons - irrelevant. I guarantee if you booked a coach or even a taxi from your house to the pool and back, it would cost an extra £7 per lesson or more. The bug cost here is almost certainly the transport.

I promise, the school is not trying to rip you off. They are doing their best to provide a national curriculum requirement which is a pain in the ass and cannot be achieved on site for free. I guarantee the school will have sourced the best deal they can. I’m sure they’d love to provide it for free, but £60x30 children is £1800. They won’t have £1800 sitting around. If the school is bigger than 1 form entry, it is obviously more.

I pay roughly twice that for swimming lessons for my children. It's not a bad price, especially if travel is included.

Ideally it would be included within a school budget, but sadly budget constraints mean contributions are required. I would be happy to pay this.

You pay twice that for a 1:15 ratio!?!?! Id fine a new swim school tbh. Lots of leisure centres are between 5 and 6 as stated above. Simmilarly swim clubs are often similar.

@Bananarama21 The problem is my dc is swimming at ASA stage 7. He is in a class at school swimming with 3 children who are stage 5's and the rest (about 10 of them) who managed to put their faces in the water on their first lesson. (Those who didn't form the other class) Swimming widths at the shallow end of a 25m/12m pool.
Yes he's bored and I've has the same from 1 of the stage 5s. He knows how to behave in the pool and as he has the same group of teachers when he swims after school I would hear about it if he was badly behaved - and they would have outed him.

Most yr3/4 kids don't have swim lessons now i guess, so the school swimming is all they get. The problem with this is that the lessons have to meet the least able and therefore the stronger kids are not getting much from it. My dc spent their last lesson 'learning' to do handstands... they have not so much as jumped in to the water out of their depth and they are about 8 lessons in. So whilst I think any time in the water is good for them I would not be paying £7 a class as the op is being asked to do when the class does not progress my child as those who cannot swim are taking priority.

Ummm...we pay £15 for a 39min lesson at the very nice and heated pool my daughter goes to! Max 6 in the class but usually only 3-4.

So to me it sounds like a bargin!

*30 min

Hm. DD's lessons were free, but the kids walked there and back, and what with changing etc only managed half an hour in the pool. Parent volunteers escorted them. I don't know how they were funded.

It sounds very reasonable to me.

Not unreasonable at all. Coach costs are incredibly high. Factor in the cost of the lessons and swimming teacher and I bet the school are already subsidising it heavily. I’d happily pay this.

@QuietKingdom

It's completely free at my DD's school, I thought it had to be as it's part of the national curriculum.

Schools these days just don't have the funds to pay for transport and the lessons themselves. Where else can the money come from?

Our nearest pool suitable for school swimming lessons is 8 miles away.

@Coffeeandtats

Hmm mixed responses! I fully appreciate the budget constraints on schools, I’m treasurer for our pta and can see that school funding is absolutely pitiful, I think it just really grates when as pp have said, he won’t even be able to swim at the end of it!

Seems to be a never ending money tree when it comes to employing people higher up the trust though, the school is being run more and more like some kind of corporate entity and the kids and teachers come bottom of the pile with parents picking up the tab!

Well, that’s academies for you. Makes you wonder what the purpose of them is sometimes…….

We didn't pay anything for our DD's school lessons. She has one every Saturday morning which is £25 a month.

LittleOwl153

Depends on the school swimming teacher I have year 3s 15 swimmers currently in the big pool they work their socks off, I teach atleast 10 of them for learn to swim but I have them building stamia up by swimming lengths. If they swim 10metres in the small pool they are tested in the big pool swimming 10 metres and we push them to swim further. Our stage 5s are working towards 50 metres so I'd accept stage 5s to manage 25metres with ease.

I think the problem with does current group is that there are only 2 teachers so the class is too big an ability span. From stage 7 down to stage 2/3 from what I'm told they can do. (Not swimming a full width, can't do handstands etc) And therefore for the stage 7 or even the 5's is not challenging.

My eldest did the same class 5 years earlier - same school, same pool. They had 3 teachers so there was a class of ~stage 5/6/7's which meant they swam lengths... that isn't happening this time.

This is why I say I wouldn't pay £7 a class as I don't see the value when they are not catering to the higher abilities.

At my kids primary it costs 67£ and it's in a pool that's only waist deep even for the ones that can swim. The private group lessons at our local pool cost less. I wish we could just pay for some group music sessions or some other activities instead

It's a council maintained primary school

LittleOwl153

Even with two teachers there should be a top group and a bottom group. Those grouped as non swimmers and swimmers regardless of what stages there in. I currently have two lanes so any that are stronger go in the outside lane, sometimes a teacher will take club swimmers. There's no reason he shouldn't be doing lengths id expect anyone who is stage 4 above to be doing lengths in theory otherwise they will not build any stamia swimming across, on occasion we will get good stage 3s in our top group aswell they still working towards lengths.