Why don't clubs encourage children to succeed anymore?

[EllieRosesMammy]

Not sure if it's exclusive to just the leisure centres in our area (Everyone Active) but my daughter has been attending swim class for over a year now and in the entire time she's had one certificate. They seem to do the same thing every lesson which is mess around with toys. There doesn't seem to be any encouragement to progress. She's almost 5 and has been swimming with me since she was a baby, so she was fairly confident in water before she even started, which is why I was hoping by now she would be starting to show some signs of swimming unaided but she's still relying on pool floats and there doesn't seem to be any encouragement to swim without them. We don't get any feedback on progress from the teachers either. Feels like I'm paying £30 a month for nothing.

I don’t think that’s anything to do with not encouraging kids to succeed (I never really cared about those certificates), you just have a crap teacher.

Is there another club?

This is how my children learnt to swim. I took them to a private school in the school holidays, every day for a week, and within a couple of courses, they were confident swimmers and were then able to join weekly classes at the local pool at a high level.

This is really just you having crap swimming lessons not a general characteristic of all after school clubs. £30 a month is really cheap, you may need to pay more for what you want (I paid £17 per lesson for mine, very good swim school and lots of progress).

Do you have a swimming club near you? A lot of them have a learn to swim pathway. My DD learnt that way as the prices were cheaper than leisure centre and quality much much better.

Everyone active will be using aqua passport to track progress, you can log in to the child's account and see exactly what the criteria for moving up to the next stage are, and how your child is doing against it - here at least you get no useful verbal feedback but if you look online you can see what is still required to be moved up.

We did Everyone Active and I can't complain. I thought my DD myself until she was 7. She then joined at level 4 and has just gone into level 8 2 years later. And the pool was closed for a long time during that due to covid. Some tea hers were better than others, but overall I am pleased with it for £26 per month.

No way my DD would have been ready at 5 to do swimming lessons in a group, she was so scared of the water then.

Dd is 15 now but started swimming with Everyone Active at 5. She spent 6 months being shouted at by the instructor who eventually sent her to level 2. Her explanation was a child her age should be swimming by now. Dd was tall and she thought she was 8 or 9.
Level 2 and 3 took 18 months of the teachers rounding up unruly kids and maybe 10 mins of swimming per half hour session.
By level 4 I had complained and asked when she'd be moving up a level. The senior tutor asked my terrified child to swim a 5m length. Across the deep end. Bless her she did it and she moved up.
For grade 4 and 5 she had a lovely teacher who took no crap off any of the kids- more than happy to ask unruly kids to sit out. She made dd swim just out of her depth as she twigged early on my tall child could hop across the pool.
Within 3 months dd was swimming 25m crawl and breaststroke and 50m backstroke, could jump into the deep end and surface and tread water.
When dd got her level 5 certificate the lovely teacher explained dd was completely watersafe and if she moved up a level she would just be consolidating what she already knew. We stopped lessons then but still saw the teacher at the pool till she retired and she always said hi.
I think group swimming depends a lot on the teachers.
If you're not happy I would save your money and look elsewhere.

If it’s the same as it used to be they won’t move them up till they are 5. I remember this exact thing with dd2 and she could swim. EA won’t let clubs run swimming lessons in their pools btw and a lot of clubs only swim in them so don’t run lessons any more.

It gets better though once they are in stage 3.

Our club runs lessons in an EA pool from total beginner upwards.

Okay, ours isn’t allowed to as isn’t the neighbouring club.

We are lucky then, some of our teachers work for both club and EA and it all works pretty smoothly.

It's possibly because our club has been teaching there for decades, long before EA came along.

There will defo be private swim schools near you, give it a Google and you’ll find loads. Private gyms, hotels and schools all tend to have swim providers in.

different swim schools actually use different schemes. I took my eldest and the local authority ran one was by far the cheapest but also the worst. Big classes, poor child behaviour and very little actual swimming.

@EspeciallyD so had we. I think there are differences in the contracts they have with different councils. The pool hire varies massively too, even when adjusted for space.

I actually think the EA lessons are fine though, vast majority of the kids in the swimming club have gone through them including both of my two. There are massive varieties in the quality of the teachers, however.

I'm a long way past the learn to swim stages now (my youngest DC is 16) so no recent experience but as so many of our teachers also work for EA I would hope they are ok. I know the pool hire costs are a difficult issue though, we have also had sessions cancelled with no warning at times.