Swimming lessons - gazing into the abyss

[Carrotsurprise]

My god, how many years does this go on for? My DD started swimming lessons at the start of year 1 now she'll probably be moving up to stage 3 at the end of term. It runs for 50!!!!! weeks of the year. Every bloody Monday evening all year bloody round. And I'm on maternity leave! When I go back to work we'll have the juggling a toddler making sure one person gets home for him and the other goes to swimming. Then one day it'll be time for him to start lessons. Every Monday evening except Christmas, for like ten years? Right? Are swimming lessons really non-negotiable??

If it's in the school curriculum already, why are parents paying 1000s of pounds for 100s of lessons over multiple years, for their children to learn to swim?

Sorry to sound thick. As you say, maybe some schools don't do it even though they shoudl because of the reasons you named. They really should though.

My son has swimming and football twice a week, you’d have a coronary 😂😂😂

I honestly don't get the fascination with swimming lessons...

The question now is, can she actually swim? If she fell into a pool, can you be confident she'd be able to get herself to the side? If yes, then stop the lessons, if she can't, then continue.
My two went to lessons until they could swim, and then they stopped...

Back in the 90s, my mum taught me to swim aged about 6, and I did a couple of half-term swim courses to learn some of the other strokes.
By the time I was 8ish, I was a confident swimmer, and one time swam a mile for charity... A couple of weeks later, my school report came out, which said, "Zingally can now swim a whole length of the pool." Bitch, I can do 64 lengths. My mum still laughs at that.

You can always go back to it in the future if she expresses an interest.

I don't think it's non-negotiable at all!! A lot of Americans on social media go on about it being non-negotiable, because there are areas of America where pretty much every house has a pool, and drowning is the biggest cause of death among children there, but in the UK it doesn't even make the top 5. Forty children per year die from drowning here, and some of those could have been prevented by wearing a life jacket (even competent adult swimmers can drown if they fall into a lake or river, so being a strong swimmer is no substitute for being careful around water).

Obviously it depends on your lifestyle - if you spend a lot of time around water then learning to swim for safety is more important, although perhaps you could find a course that focuses more on lifesaving skills, like floating on your back, climbing out etc, rather than perfecting their front crawl technique.

My mum taught me and my sister to swim in the pool on holiday. My biggest motivation was that my younger sibling got the hang of it before me, and I couldn't bear it, so I got in the pool and swam. Once we could stay afloat, we perfected our technique in school swimming lessons, and practiced at the local leisure centre whenever my mum took us at the weekend. My sister became a very strong swimmer that way, and I was fairly competent.

If your daughter enjoys lessons then its worth it, but if she doesn't, and isn't showing signs that this will be her big talent, then I don't think there's any harm in taking her out of formal lessons and teaching her yourself in your own time.

Hmmmmm, has he taken 14 years and 100s of lessons (that have cost 1000s of pounds,) to learn to kick a football though? 👀

I am going to guess the answer is no.

All schools do it, because they have to. Most don’t do it until KS2, though (travelling and changing is much less hassle with older children) and many parents feel they need their children to start lessons earlier than that. Also, most schools don’t give children lessons for very long because it’s so expensive and time-consuming.

I think that being 'able to swim' means different things to different people. My partner would say he can swim. He can in that he can do a few lengths but he's not been properly taught, his technique is terrible and that really limits the enjoyment he gets out of it.

My lessons as a child stopped when I was able to swim 25m in each stroke (not butterfly, that wasn't taught in my 80s lessons!). But with hindsight it was way too early to stop - I never mastered front crawl and now only do breaststroke. As I said in my PP, I've been totally inspired watching the more advanced classes while my son is in his Level 2 class. I'm really wanting to try the techniques they are using to improve their front crawl to try and improve my own swimming - the level these children are at now compared to 9 months ago is incredible to me. They are way beyond the 'can swim 25m' - they could all probably do that years ago. Interestingly, all the more advanced classes are mostly all girls. Do boys stop at lower levels on average 🤷‍♀️

I agree that most swimming lessons are a scam. Years spent perfecting strokes rather than focusing on stamina, so that the kids get much less exercise and faff around much more. Like most people on this thread, I have sucked it up and sent DD to the local Better Leisure lessons, which are fairly cheap and have become more productive as she has progressed (currently in Gold level so working on her 400m). But progress through the levels seems to be really arbitrary.

@albalass I wish I had the answer. As a child I had a very good breaststroke and equally good backstroke, but failed to learn front crawl. So I was stuck in class 4 of 6 for ages, even though I was sometimes asked to demonstrate my breaststroke for the class. Eventually I was moved up regardless, to a class where we were no longer taught front crawl, but expected to do it ...... disaster! I soon gave up lessons. All those yrs later I still can't swim fc, despite having tried to teach myself on a number of occasions. It doesn't hold me back, and I overtake much younger breaststrokers in the pool. I swim a mile in a respectable time, so I decided not to bother that I can't do fc, now called freestyle. Neither of my DSs learned it either, and they can swim well. I think there are just some of us who can't coordinate the breathing. Like you I can just about do 25 metres. I end up spluttering. I don't think it matters.

@BatchCookBabe school swimming lessons generally only start around Years 3 or 4 - many parents want their children to be able to swim before that. And they are only for a few lessons each year. When I had my school lessons, out of 30 of us, around 5 or 6 couldn't swim and they spent their time in the shallow end learning the basics. But it's not enough time for many children, and I don't think any of them ever made it out of the shallow end to join the rest of us (who were practising techniques, endurance, learning how to rescue etc).

The baby/ toddler stage is just another form of active rhyme time play group.

The advantage that it had for me was that I could take two DCs swimming safely on my own when it would have been too logistically difficult to go solo. DS1 could sit on the side by the instructor with a toy car while I was in with DS2. DS2 could be in the car seat/ play pen while I was in with DS1. It was also (light) exercise for me at a time that any small wins were worth claiming.

Also with DS1 turning out to be dyspraxic and having sensory issues, it was always just something he was used to and a good range of whole body movement to do regularly. He could have been difficult to introduce/ re-introduce to later. (With my issues with swimming/ cycling, dyspraxia in the family is no shocker)

The infant school years are probably when there's least pay off in benefits/ learning.

But for us with a close age gap I was there with one of them anyway and the lessons normally worked together well so they both had lessons on the one journey.

I wouldn't rush to recommend staged lessons for 4-6 year olds in terms of learning efficiency for someone who wasn't already doing it. 7 is a more receptive age for learning effectively.

Our progress was delayed by dyspraxia, a phase where my work committments interfered for a while (so he missed lessons every few weeks for a few months) and a year written off by Covid. Aside from the enforced months of closure, DS was ready to move up, but jammed by avaliability and a freeze on progressions because a lot of children regressed March- Sept so the previous gradings weren't necessarily accurate.

Ultimately we've come out of it with a strong, competant swimmer, and a lot of regular exercise on the way. For me that's a fair outcome and we could have stopped years ago if we wanted to. I wasn't bothered about getting to that outcome ASAP.

@Idontpostmuch you sound very like me. I think I'm just jealous when I see people zipping up and down the fast lane when I'm solidly in the medium one with my breast stroke! But you're right, maybe I just need to embrace it!

I suppose that's the difference between, say, being able to play a game of football with friends respectably, and being able to play football competitively. Not all children can do the latter, whether it's because of raw talent, or practicalities, or they'd rather do another sport instead. With swimming, a basic level of competence is considered necessary for everyone, because it could save your life. Casual and leisurely swimming can also be a lot of fun and is good for you. But there's no real need for everyone to learn how to do perfect front crawl and butterfly stroke etc., unless they really enjoy it and want to take that sport further (at the expense of, say, ballet, or gymnastics, or basketball, or athletics, because there are only so many hours in a day). I certainly find it strange to call it "non-negotiable".

DS2 ended up with about 8 hours of teaching time of school lessons because restrictions wiped out the lesson time of the year above so they took half of DS2's year's allocation to compensate.

There were more non-swimmers in DS2's class and the standard of the "advanced" group was a lot lower by the end of their allocation than with DS1's class that finished just before the lockdowns.

I had a lot more school allocation than my DCs put together back in the days of schools affording swimming pools. I still emerged as one of the two non-swimmers of the 60 children in the year.

That's why it was personally important to me.
That doesn't mean it's a universal truth though.

(And swimming is better/logistically easier/ more useful than football #controversial )

@albalass I used to feel exactly the same way, but I've given myself permission to forget about front crawl, and the feeling is good. I enjoy breaststroke and backstroke, get good exercise, and no longer care about the front crawlers speeding by. I hope you can either manage to learn the crawl, or reach the same peace that I've found - it's pure freedom 😃. Good luck!

I can assure you that it hasn't been impossible for my dd or are you trying to say I'm lying? As for waiting for places on the next stage we have been very lucky to get a slot within a fortnight at the most, but whilst you are waiting you remain in the same class and they will work through the targets for the level you are moving to with you.

Because it’s some kind of protection racket. The lessons are not very good and take ages before there is much progress. DIY is harder and harder because the pools are doing lane swimming more frequently so less time for families learning by themselves. Plus the lessons are so expensive that many families will be unable to afford it.

I seriously think swimming lessons the way they run for most people are a SCAM. Obviously learning to swim is important and I have taught my children but it is a lot harder than it should be. Maybe we should have gone for 121s? Yanbu OP.

I failed majorly with getting one of mine to learn to swim. We fell off lessons during Covid and never got back into it. Finally dealt with it by paying for a weeks worth of 1:1 lessons. Got the job done and no endless abyss of sweaty leisure centres!

I don't understand why it takes months and months - let alone year and years - to learn to swim?

Going to swimming lessons that are costing 1000s of pounds and lasting several years, or even longer, like 10 to 20 years, and going through stage after stage after stage is utterly bonkers. Parents are legitimately being ripped off, and someone needs to put a stop to it. Fact is, swimming needs to be in the school curriculum. It should be free, it should be for every child.

I agree. It's a racket. There is no way it takes 10 years of swimming lessons 50 weeks a year for children to be able to swim and be safe around water. If it does take that long then there's either something seriously wrong with the teaching methods and scheme used OR it's just a bloody rip off designed to milk the parental cash cow. The vast majority of parents (as you can see on here) see swimming as an "essential life skill". That means they'll do anything to make sure their child can swim.
Clever marketing means a constant source of income for instructors and pools.

Most children should be able to learn to swim fairly quickly and can then continue going to the pool with their parents. If they are interested in learning more complex skills and different strokes or diving or life-saving or whatever, then they can do that but 10 years at 50 lessons a year, nope. That's a scam.

How the fuck did we all learn to swim before all this stuff started?
I went swimming with my dad and we did have lessons in school for 2 years (I appreciate not all schools are offering this these days), and that was that. I'm a strong swimmer now, open-water swimming and regularly 100-120 lengths in the pool.

On child number three in year 2 and losing the will to live over it.
Second born Year 4 child is on her last course. I’ve no idea about stages and I honestly don’t care. I just hand over more money when they get a badge and throw in in the drawer. I do keep trying to say we don’t really care about buying the badges. Just want them to learn to swim but it falls on deaf ears. I think I will stop child number three by the time they have finished year 3 unless they are totally rubbish.

My first born had a term with school. My second born had a grand total of three lessons. They decided to split the class then one one lesson got cancelled due to bad weather. Thing is they leave it till year 3 when most parents have already got them swimming so they can get away with the bare minimum, and just keep back the few whose parents haven’t bothered to teach them.

This sounds like the "Better" leisure centre model. My DC was in their class for about 18 months, and I was also disheartened that it is 50 weeks, and the feedback is non-existent. You have to log on to an impossible to find portal, and you discover it hasn't been updated for six months. Then when they moved up a class, I had a lot of back and forth with, staff contradiction of each other and I had to insist that I had been told DC was ready.

There was no badge or certificate or anything.

Then the new teacher seemed to forever have a problem with DC, so I gave notice.

Since stopping the £35 per month lessons I have enough saved every three months for four nights in butlins, going in the pool every day. When we got to butlins I realised I had forgotten DC's armbands, and it transpired then that oh, OK, you can swim then.

I think now it's just practice and stamina building, and butlins is perfect for that

Our leisure centre follows the STA Learn to Swim Academy rather than Swim England. The lessons are in blocks of 10, the children are assessed as they go along and if they pass they move up to the next step after week 10. I think this works really well, most seem to move up after the second attempt if not on the first.

My eldest did lessons from age 3 to about 8 or 9 (with a gap for Covid in the middle). She’s a strong and confident swimmer (she’s nearly 11 now). She’s also had lessons with school from year 4. My youngest is 8 and hated all lessons with a huge passion (would just stand in the corner looking cold) so we take him regularly. He’s a nervous child so it’s taken years but he can now swim about 10-15 metres and it’s improving. It’s been a slog though. He’s had one term of school lessons which has helped. It has taken years to get him to swim, just chipping away at it.