School KS2 swimming lessons- who pays?

[Wrongintherightway]

Letter home from school requesting £42.50 for KS2 swimming

I understand swimming is compulsory and part of the curriculum but are we really expected to pay for it?

My son spreads swims for a local club and is a very strong swimmer so not happy to pay twice and school swimming class well below his current standard

£42.50?

For one term?

I've just paid £30 for two children for one term, which I don't begrudge, as I think it must be subsidised as it works out as £1.50 per child per lesson, but that sounds like a lot

Just don't pay then. Whats the worst that can happen? If he's already a strong speed swimmer, he's fine! And the school have offered it so they've fulfilled their obligations.

FWIW though every single independent school I have ever worked at offers it for free (even covering the cost of the lifeguard) to the local school. And not just because it's to cover themselves for charity laws, but because they have felt it's the right thing to do.

No, I don't think it right parents should pay.

Broadly speaking, as swimming is on the NC, it should be free.
However budgets really are being massively squeezed, many, many, schools request a payment to cover transport even if they don't ask for the cost of the lessons.

Pay if you can afford it. If they don't get enough contributions they may in future drop the number of lessons provided, which may be fine for kids like your son, but not for others whose parents don't/can't take them. In my DDs old primary only about 1/3 of the children could swim a length before lessons, and they only had 6 ...

View the lessons as a bit of extra fitness training and a bit of fun with his friends.

It's free here, 39 lessons , one a week for one academic year.

Ditto OP, both my 2 swim for the local club but we still paid for the KS2 lessons otherwise they'd have been stuck in a classroom.
I spoke to the teachers and they arranged for DC to do the life saving aspect and for them to do about 4 times the amount of distance their classmates were doing. The swim teacher kept an eye on their technique too so in the end, they did benefit.

Hi we pay for swimming y3-6, it was £15 a term last year it's now £20 a term, I pay It as I know if there are not enough contributions they will cancel and, my DC love it, the problem is the lack of school funding I don't mind but £42.50 seems very exspensive.

So many people didn't pay the voluntary contribution at our school that it is now only offered to years 2 - 5 for one term a year. The ones who didn't pay were the ones who's children could already swim and they couldn't see the value of the school provision and didn't care if they didn't go. School couldn't afford to pay a supervisor to look after non-swimming children, so now everyone loses out. Welcome to 2017.

We don't pay for it at all; the school pays. They only go for every day for one week in year 3 and every day for 2 weeks in year 5 though.

Pseudo So they still get 4 terms of lessons? That is still pretty good! As I said, at our primary they only get 6 lessons total, and that is with no transport costs as they walk to the pool!

Yes it's on the national curriculum but unless your school is within walking distance of a pool the main cost is the transport. It can cost anything up to £200 for a coach (per trip) and for small village schools this is a huge cost.
So if you can afford to pay it, please do (personally I think only Tory voters should have to pay- they voted in this awful government determined to wreck our education system and give all teachers nervous breakdowns)

It's free at our school as it's a statutory requirement.

They only only swim in years 4 & 5 and only for half the school year.

It's the school compulsory lessons with no classroom alternative provision, if children have a doctors note and can't swim they go into reception class to help out!

I normally really don't mind paying for any extras even if the school should cover the cost but we are the only school in the area to charge and £42.50 seems a lot when I'm already paying swim club fees

Presumably it is the transport you are paying for rather than the swimming?

Our school request around £20 for one term of swimming. They don't charge for the lesson, just for coach to local swimming pool.
£42.50 for half the school year for only 2 years, seems fine to me. Our school do it every year from yr3 to yr6.

It really does depend on the transport needs, our school just walks to the local council swimming pool, no contribution requested and they swim in every year other than reception.

If the school is rural with no pool without a coach, then you can understand why a voluntary contribution is asked, as long as it is voluntary I don't see the harm, if you disagree don't pay though!

He goes regardless - it's part of the curriculum. You're paying for transport.

Scandalous that schools are obliged to provide swimming lessons without resources, but there it is. I'd rather cough up for the coach than force the school to pay for it by ... not having enough paper for the photocopier, or cutting the TA by half a day, or whatever.

I commented on another thread about this kind of thing the other day:

You cannot charge for education. You can charge for optional extras, but this sounds compulsory. And you can ask for voluntary contributions, but again that doesn't sound like what you've got here.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/514619/Charging_for_school_activities.pdf

Not that I blame the school - budgets are utterly fucked. I left England rather than be a head in a country that won't fund education properly.

I paid when it was a Labour Government! Paying is not new for many of us! However it was for transport. What is wrong with that? Some people seem to expect everything for free.

It's one of those "voluntary contributions", and should be phrased as such in any communications. If you can afford it, I'd pay it. If you can't, don't feel bad about not paying it.

I know how desperately short our school are and will happily contribute any time we're asked. They have to lay on swimming, so if there aren't enough contributions it will come out of budget for other resources.

We get a weekly lesson for 4 terms. Y3 and Y4. Not sure what happens in Y5. We don't pay, and there are no transport costs as school is practically next door to the pool.

Bike - ours all do y3 and y4, then only those who didn't reach the NC standard in y4 go again in y5. Maybe yours do similar?

We had to pay for DD when she was in yr 3. The costs were to cover transport to and from the pool To be honest though it would have been cheaper to bung 4 kids in a taxi each way and the costs would have halved rather than put them on a coach.

We pay £33 a term. We can afford it so I don't mind. Mine both swim very well but they have fun, they get out of the classroom, and it is exercise. The fact that it is fun is the most important bit for me.

What's the transport for it?

You need to be asking the school is this for the cost of the lessons or for the cost of the transport to and from the baths. If it is the latter it allowable for the school to ask for a voluntary payment, if it is the former it is part of the national curriculum to learn to be able to swim 25 metres and cannot be charged for.