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.

People walk by rivers, canals, ponds etc

Also do remember that not all families prioritise the same thing. Why is swimming essential and playing the guitar not? I say this because music gives me lots of pleasure and swimming not so much (under sufferance I get in, before making a break for the hot tub!)

Yes swimming is a great skill to have, no it is not guaranteed to save your life, no 'I/child is a strong swimmer' equally wont guarantee to save your life

No it wont save a child drowning in a bath, pool, pond, river, beach, lake strong swimmers can still drown anywhere

So how many british kids need the skill of swimming, kids can still drown in the repitive holiday pools parents are desperate to sit around

Again it is a great skill but not essential

And flotation toys are dangerous

I'm a bit surprised as I thought it was a compulsory part of the curriculum in primary schools?

Most of DS1s class could already swim 25m when they started doing school swimming in year 3, but they still all did a half term of it for PE in years 3 and 4 (and possibly year 5).

Having said that, they walk to the pool. I can see if schools had to hire a coach or get the bus, they might only be able to do it once per year group.

Strange. I thought all primary schools have a legal obligation to teach them to swim a minimum distance?

Tory austerity must surely have contributed to this "500 public swimming pools have shut their doors since 2010. Nearly half of these closures have occurred in just the last five years."

I’m not at all surprised by this. As others have said, swimming lessons or even just going swimming generally is expensive. My local pools also seem to want to put people off going there by having incomprehensible timetables that make it very tricky to work out when I can just go there and swim without there being lessons/aqua aerobics/lane swimming/kids’ inflatables session etc.

Very few schools now have their own pools and the cost of coaches to take pupils to the nearest pool can be ridiculously high. Then when they get there, by the time everyone’s got changed and in the pool there’s only a limited time for the lesson and when the teacher’s got 30 kids to watch they’re not going to learn much.

6 weeks of lessons with a class of 30 is not going to get a child from non-swimmer to 25m though.

This hasn’t been our experience at all, thankfully. DS’s school incorporates swimming lessons into the timetable for all children from Reception upwards and always has two teachers allocated to each lesson so that one can spend time at the shallow end of the pool with the rest of the class while the other focuses on stroke technique and length swimming with 1 or 2 at a time. We also personally choose to have a weekly 1-2-1 session for DS on a Saturday because he enjoys it and hopes to be good enough to join the school swim team in a couple of years. There isn’t a single child out of 24 in his (Y2) year group that can’t swim a 25m length of the pool.

Very controversial post I'm about to write, but this is an essential skill that can just save that child's life. It should be an absolute priority for every parent to budget for.

Every week or so we get posters saying they'd like more children. People always ask if they have the space in their home, but considering the costs of offering ALL the children life skills training is what parents should consider.

Same when deciding to still b a sahm or only work few hours after the children are all in school.

How interesting. Our local state school in Y5 did them - no pool on site - the kids walked to a local pool.

I’d say it was pretty mixed tbh and great value for money. My dc are older but we used to go swimming twice a week plus lessons then every other day in the holidays as I got a membership too and the more we went the cheaper per use it was. I used to make everyone wash their hair at the pool it saved me a fortune on hot water bills.

I do know parents who couldn’t make time work for them and did a crash course in holidays. A couple of weeks and the kid could swim. Not amazingly but enough to swim across a pool so they could pass the swim test to play on giant inflatable.

I can't understand people saying that being able to swim is not an essential life skill.

Do people not walk near water, play near the sea or go on boats?
Imagine your child falling into water and not being able to at least attempt to save them?

In my view Swim England are actually partly culpable, because they have developed a swimming curriculum that is based on swimming as a sport, not swimming as a practical life skill. Almost every swimming school follows the Swim England scheme and the lessons are utterly inefficient. You spend literally years going week in week out while your kids struggles with bilateral breathing and dolphin. For the children who are naturally sporty the lessons are great, but for the kids who just need to learn how to survive they are a shocking waste of time and money. In the end parents run out of money and patience and pull the kid out in stage 3 or 4 when they can't quite swim properly. Or they look at the whole saga and don't bother in the first place.

Swim England should have a parallel track which is just swimming as a life skill: 100m in a survival stroke, treading water, floating, falling in wearing clothes. That's it.

My dcs' school is in the deprived part of town.

As is I think standard, they get a term of swimming in year 3 and a term in year 5 (this year half deferred to next year due to issues with the pool the school uses).

They have grouped the year 5 kids this year and about a fifth can swim - all the middle-class kids. No surprise when it's is £50 per kid per month around here for after-school lessons and it takes forever for them to learn.

Is it only 6 weeks? my kids school went on for terms

Given the number of children who start year 7 below age expected level in reading and maths I’m not sure swimming is where I would focus. How many children die drowning in circumstances that could’ve been prevented by a few school swimming lessons?

I do think if they’re not going to do it properly then it should be off the curriculum entirely - my kid’s primary school does six 30 minute group lessons at the end of year five and that’s it. It makes no difference to anyone’s ability to swim given such a tiny amount of instruction time and given it takes an entire morning of bus travel, changing etc etc is a complete waste of time.

Swimming lessons are not only expensive, but we’ve tried a couple and they weren’t very good. Big classes, and a teacher on the side who waits for the children to say when they’re ready to give up a float so it’s loads of children all with two arm ring thingys per arm and a noodle each for months on end.
If we take them it’s a) busy with people splashing around, which is fine at a family swim session but not ideal for teaching, b) cold, which makes me not want to go, and c) also expensive.

Why do schools have to pick up slack from the parents?

DS swimming lessons are £6 a week, if we take him at the weekend it's free as he has swimming lessons there. My wife has to pay £1 for herself and I am free as I am a gym member there (£12.50/m)

It's not expensive.

I can't swim, DH can't swim. I made sure I took both my boys to swimming lessons from age 3. My nearest pool involved a bus ride ( including over a ferry) I took each one after school. We're not even a two income family, but swimming to a decent standard , level 8 , was non negotiable, as we live very close to the sea and rivers.

They don't just randomly fall in though. It's generally not hard to be careful around the edge of a pond.

And as per a previous poster, I don't think my having picked up a brick from a clear heated pool in my pyjamas decades ago is going to help me fully clothed in a murky freezing pond.

At least you'd have more chance as a swimmer than a non swimmer!

31% of children live in poverty, those families don't have the spare cash for crash courses or swimming pool trips however great value for money it is.

So you never get on ferries or boats at all? No walks by the river?

I don’t think it’s all that common for people to fall in. I live in Scotland where we hsve more open water and vast majorities of the drownings are people who enter water deliberately. There is always the odd one who falls in but often they stand no chance due to clothes/ cold water shock and even strong swimmers who jump in to help have drowned.