school swimming lessons

[teapot97]

I'm doing some research about opinions on schools swimming lessons for children in England. If you have a minute please could you answer the questions in this survey.

www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MZJ9CKQ

I concur that if your child can already prove that they can swim 25 metres by the time school offers swimming lessons ( and note that there is no set year in which schools have to do this), then the time spent on the logistics of getting a whole class to and from swimming pools would be better spent on other learning for those children. What do really rural schools do, if there are a significant distance from a suitable pool? So much travel time wasting the school day.

"Even the competent swimmers in my classes would have been very annoyed to stay behind with the HT instead of going swimming! And how would you prove which children could already swim 25 metres? "
The swimming instructor provides us with a list and the children left behind are very happy often it's the ones who have to go swimming who are very annoyed.

Swimming lessons my children go to with school are awful and a waste of time for my children. It takes up a whole afternoon for however many weeks they do it. They do very few lengths -about 3/4 so limited practice in the lesson. It is the same teachers who originally taught my children to swim at the local pool. The standard of teaching is very poor with little individual feedback to help the children improve. Also a number of children have lessons with teachers at other poools who teach the strokes slightly differently. As the children don’t swim precisely how these teachers teach it they are put in a lower group. On top of that I need to make a voluntary donation for it. So annoying.

I think it is really important that children learn to swim and if parent aren’t able to provide it then schools should. I don’t know what the answer is but there probably isn’t one solution that fits all.