Compulsory Swimming

[yellowmatress]

My daughter is in Y3 and has just finished 6 swimming lessons with the school. We were told the children had to attend as PE was part of the compulsory curriculum.

However, the school would not fund the lessons and we had to pay for the lessons, pool hire and coach travel to the local pool.

We have now had a letter saying they will be sswimming again and that we have to pay again. However, when pushed they will not exclude any child from joining in due to financial problems.

What I want to know is that if I refuse to pay as money is very tight at the moment (like lots of people) can I demand that they pprovide an alternative pe lesson?

Just to add, she already attends swimming lessons at the council pool which we pay for and is a good swimmer.

Any advice would be gratefully receieved.

Thanks,

dd1's old school had their own pool. lessons were obv free.

they raised the money for it themselves by going on some 'people's millions' thing/ national lottery or somesuch i think.

loathe to mention pta fundraising as do agree that lea should cough up for mandatory activities, but understand there are limitations various.

How about using the money you pay for the council pool lessons to pay for the school ones instead? Or do you think the quality would be less with the latter?

This is the kind of thing that our PTA would consider subsidising to make it more affordable; I know its been done with football club etc.

It's a lot of trouble having a school pool these days. I know of two primaries near us that stopped using theirs after a new directive came out from county.

If you have a pool you need to pay lifeguards and maintenance costs, and the risk assessments are huge! You save all this hassle by using the municipal pool.

We have our own pool too. ( Not as posh as it sounds, we are a small rural school with a small rural pool, outdoor, dodgy heating and only open when the weather is fine )
BUT, when it is fine all the children from Reception to Yr 6 swim 3 times a week, we run Booster and G&T swimming groups, after school swimming clubs and we have NEVER had a child leave school who couldn't swim!
There are apparently only 3 primary schools in the county with their own pool so we are very grateful, we simply couldn't afford to bus the children into the council pool and certainly not 3 times a week! It is expensive to run, but the PTFA raise hundreds every year to keep it open so we don't have to charge/ask for voluntary donations!

Oh, and we don't pay lifeguards, ours are mums who we pay to be trained. All the teachers have swimming qualifications so we all teach our classes, mums come in to help with changing the reception children and the TA's swim with our Special Needs children and those who need 1:1 support!

Swimming is part of the national curriculum so schools by law have to provide it. Nowadays schools are given a budget and out of that they should be funding swimming lessons. some schools fund more lessons and some less. I think your school is trying to pull a fast one as they know full well they are legally obliged to provide some lessons it may be that they have to lose something else in order to do this but they should'nt be asking parents to pay.
I'd try to get some parents who also feel they same as you do to meet up with the head/school governors and get them to explain why something which is on the national curriculum needs to be paid for by parents. This sort of thing really annoys me about schools if it was me I'd just tell the class teacher I won't be paying for the swimming lessons and then see if my child is left behind. I definitely won't be going to see the head and "explaining" my financial circumstances to them.

We don't have to pay, but it is offered only to non swimmers and only for one term. Tis a bit sad really.

mumzy - Our school is paying for the lessons from the budget. The subs we are thinking of asking for will be for the coach travel which is getting more and more expensive.

DD had free swimmimg lessons in YR3. She hated swimming and never got any certificates.
We didn't have to pay a penny, not for the cost of the lessons or the transport to and fro.
In YR6 they then offered catch up lessons to all those children who didn't get certificates. These were free too, including transport. DD contined to have the lessons till she got her certificate.
All the children had their certifictes by the time they left the school.

We have to pay 45 pounds each for two children.

Does anyone know where I could find out what the minimum requirement is for swimming in the curriculum. I think someone posted above that it was for KS2 only, but do children have to do a set number of lessons a each year or what?
Our school charges about £25 for 9 half-hour sessions, mainly to cover the coach cost. I have my doubts about how effective the teaching really is as it's existing teachers & some parent helpers (they have had training) rather swimmining instructors.

Ours is £70 for 10 lessons . That's each term for 2 years (Yr 1 & Yr 2). Most of that is the coach cost I think.