1 out of 4 children can’t swim when going into year 7.

[Quiethelper]

As the title says really. I was shocked to read over 1 out 4 children can’t swim 25m when going into year 7.

Secondary schools in our area don’t do lessons. Surly this needs to be addressed for the ones who couldn’t save themselves if they fell into water.

I would fully support and be happy for budget to be allocated for children to have essential swimming skills.

I feel really sad about this statistic.

@CatHairEveryWhereNow I more meant why are people putting up with it, especaially if lessons are expensive - complain or if you are able vote with your feet - or flippers in this situation.

If I was wasting £60 a month to watch my kids sit at the side of the pool I would be furiously hassling the council.

Because it may be that or nothing - which was situation we were in before we moved.

I also didn't know why first lot of lessons were ineffective and having seen none better at that point if it was too high expectations from us.

I spoke to other parents hence finding out swim club offered better lesson but were completely inaccessible to us. Some of the other parents had complained - and just got told the teachers were all qualified and that was the price - and then the lessons were under threat anyway though in end it was price hikes.

Some posters have said nearest pool to them is 7 miles way - so if the lessons are shit good one may be even further. For us it was 3.5 miles in first place and a long walk or bus journey since our move 10 minutes or 20 min from their primary school - so it was much easier to find lessons we could get to.

It’s disappointing but I’m not surprised. Many schools don’t do them anymore, perhaps there isn’t the finances in their strapped budgets. Council run lessons are often piss poor, at least my daughters were and she still isn’t a confident swimmer at 11. They are too short, the instructor doesn’t get in the water with them, feels like it was a different teacher every week and many times it was cancelled due to poor staffing or problems with the pool. I pulled her out of them. In our local area, of the two pools, one is never open in the evenings except for lessons and the other is always mobbed and is more of a leisure pool with no no suitable ‘teaching’ area for me to teach her myself. Better lessons with private companies will be too expensive for many families in this financial climate. I’m not trained to properly teach her and I don’t really have the time, especially with the restricted hours in our local pool. I read somewhere that very frequent lessons over a short period of time, like 3/4 sessions a week, is much more effective than the half an hour (if that) once a week that many children will be getting.

You would be happy for a budget to be allocated for it … from where?

sadly the drowning deaths I read about most often are from children and teens that can swim! Generally over confident in that fact! It’s rare, in fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case of an 11+ drowning because they couldn’t swim.

Yes this! The timetable thing is very true. Can’t always work out when we can just go for a swim!

In year 4 at primary they go to the local pool for lessons within the curriculum. And they need to pass to a certain standard. Then repeat in year 5 if not successful. I thought that would be all uk primarys?
My kids started as newborns and are still going now. We are not rich but it was one thing I wanted my part time wage to go towards.

I'd say it was more like 3rd at my secondary in 1996. What was worse I was the only girl from my primary that could swim, the rest had lost the skill. We lived in a coastal area too, but the parents didn't have the money or desire to teach their kids.

Some people just don't float. I'm one of them. I don't get people who say swimming is easy and you just do it. It's probably true about culture though. My mum wasn't allowed to swim as a child and she is afraid of deep water. We didn't really go swimming as a result and I never mastered it even though I'm not scared of it as such. I just sink.

The purpose of swimming lessons as per Swim England has also changed. Whereas in days of yore, you only learned butterfly if you were in a swim club (and therefore by default quite good at swimming already), nowadays dolphin kick is taught from Stage 1.

What this means in practice is that they have a lot of good, potential Olympic swimmers coming through the system, which is great for gold medal prospects, however the numbers of children who give lessons up around Stage 3/4/5, as they aren't physically strong enough to master fly yet, enough to move onto the next stage is huge. They then sit at that stage for months until the parents get fed up on paying for no progress, and get pulled out of lessons 'as they can swim'.

And then if the kids don't swim by themselves after stopping lessons, they forget the skill, as they haven't been doing it long enough to have the technique engrained.

This new way of doing things is great for competitive swimming but less good if you just want to be a strong enough swimmer to have fun in the water, and have no intention of ever doing fly ever again, I think most people would be in the latter category.

We had to get 1-1 swimming lessons for dc2. The instructor said he'd never seen anything like it, that he swam like a brick. We got there eventually, it cost a small fortune, he won't be winning any medals but he won't drown in a puddle.

Why can’t parents teach their children to swim? (I know there are cost implications). My mum couldn’t swim but she took all three of us, every Sunday, until we could.

I thought it was part of the curriculum? I can understand difficulties getting it up and running again after COVID but that was ages ago?
One of the state primary schools DS attended even had a swimming team!

Only put YABU as I think it’s a parents job to teach children basic survival skills.

It’s part of my children’s. They do a week intensive course but I still take mine to the pool and taught them before it came in.

I wondered why there was such focus on bloody butterfly! It was so frustrating (and expensive) paying for loads of weeks when my kids were stuck on butterfly for what felt like forever before being able to move up a level. I had told both kids that they had to complete level 7 (all I really wanted was them to reach a 'reliably won't drown and confident in the water' level - not become the next Michael Phelps) but I very nearly caved and stopped early just because of waiting for them to complete the butterfly requirements.

It's such a weirdly pointless stroke. Breaststroke is lovely for looking at the view, front crawl is efficient and fast, butterfly is neither. I've swam the 11 miles of Windermere front crawl in one go before so I'd consider myself a pretty strong swimmer but I doubt I could manage a width of a pool doing butterfly! But I've never, in my many, many years of (non-competitive) swimming ever even had to contemplate trying.

At my son's school, they get a term in Year 6. That's it.

My DC’s primary had a pool and they didn’t let anyone leave without being able to swim. I’m not sure if it’s still doing that, the pool was only open in the autumn and summer terms.
I still took DC for swimming lessons as we spent a lot of the summer away w a communal pool.
I didn’t learn until year 7 as my secondary had a pool. Only half a dozen of us couldn’t swim by the end of the year and I didn’t want that for my DC. They were about 4-5 when they learnt.

Yes this. Absolutely ridiculous. I remember stopping swimming lessons because I couldn’t swim butterfly. Now my ds10 is in the same position. He’s a really good swimmer mainly but has been stuck on 98% progress on stage 5 for about 6 months because of butterfly 🤦‍♀️

My DS is almost 40 and despite intensive private lessons, weekly school visits to the pool and endless family trips as a child he still can’t swim. The thought of him still sitting in his primary classroom because they wouldn’t let him leave made me laugh aloud.

Don't worry, my DH would be keeping him company. He promises me he had weekly 1 to 1 lessons for years. He still can't even float.

i take everyone’s points on board - I didn’t expect such strong feelings every child should beable to have the opportunity to learn to swim in this country for free. I paid for swim lessons for mine- I had that luxury. But it make me sad that children don’t have the opportunity on going. Don’t get me started on free dental care for kids…. When I win euro millions I’ll set up a free dentist for kids and a leisure centre for kids to have open access.

It’s expensive - council run pools are cheaper but the class sizes are huge and usually staffed by 17/18 year olds so constantly revolving teachers who leave for uni every September

i ended up teaching my eldest to swim but again it’s still expensive £10-£15 a time with minimal slots for family swim times - and it requires commitment and tough love at times.

I now have twins and a single parent - swimming pool ratio rules mean I can’t take them on my own even in the baby pool to give them lessons

It's very sad.
Swimming is so expensive. £40 a week it cost me for 2 kids swimming lessons. It's unreal. But a life skill that I'm lucky enough to afford (just 😅) I can no longer get my nails done, but to me swimming is a necessity.

I thought this might be the case tbh