Sporting Future Strategy: Swim Group Review of Curriculum Swimming and

Water Safety Lessons

Jon Glenn

Purpose and scope of the Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety Review Group

To advise Government on how to ensure that all children leaving primary school are able to meet the national curriculum minimum standard of capability and confidence in swimming and safe self-rescue, including for disabled young people and those with special educational needs.

Challenges to delivering effective Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety

• Teachers do not feel confident

teaching swimming and water safety

due to a lack of formal training

• Cost of transport

• Costs relating to pool hire and

external swimming instructors

• Time away from the classroom

disrupts the school day

Recommendations cover six key areas

1. Ensuring all children meet the national

curriculum requirements

2. Ensuring the national curriculum

requirements are fit-for-purpose

3. Ensuring quality swimming tuition

4. Ensuring effective monitoring and evaluation

5. Ensuring access to facilities

6. Ensuring good communication about

Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety

1. Ensuring all children meet the national curriculum requirements

• Government to support a new national Top-up Swimming programme

to ensure all primary school children reach the statutory standards for

swimming and water safety.

• The Department for Education to support the national roll-out of a new Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety Resource Pack to all primary schools and curriculum swimming providers, including promotion of a new achievement award for pupils.

2. Ensuring the national curriculum requirements are fit-for-purpose

• Swim England to continue work with international partners to agree a

standardised definition of national curriculum requirements (for

inclusion in the Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety Resource

Pack).

• Government to include the swimming programme of study within the

next review of the National Curriculum.

3. Ensuring Quality Swimming Tuition

• Government to fund specific training for school teachers and teaching

staff who deliver swimming lessons to ensure high quality lessons

• The Department for Education and Swim Group to create a Teacher’s

summer school to upskill teachers in the delivery of curriculum

swimming and water safety lessons.

4. Ensuring effective monitoring and evaluation

• Department for Education to add a condition as part of the Primary Premium

monitoring that primary schools must publish curriculum swimming and water

safety attainment levels.

• The Swim Group to develop a Swimming Report template for schools as part of

the Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety Resource Pack, which Ministers

encourage primary schools to complete and forward to Secondary schools.

• Department for Culture, Media and Sport to work with the Swim Group and Sport

England to develop a question for Active Lives: Children’s Survey (KPI 5) that

requests information regarding swimming proficiency.

5. Ensuring access to facilities

• Swim England and Swim Group to support schools and local authorities to explore

different types of facilities such as demountable and mobile pools, and utilising safe

outdoor swimming opportunities, especially where access to water space is difficult or

areas of aquatic deprivation have been identified.

• Government to encourage all Local Authority areas to develop a school swimming and

water safety delivery plan to support primary schools to meet their PE national curriculum

requirements.

• Ministers and Swim Group to meet private operators, and the Swim Group to explore the

possibility of providing tax breaks for private operators to open their pools to schools.

• Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure Primary School

representatives are consulted with regarding swimming facility closure impact

assessments

6. Ensuring good communication about Curriculum Swimming and Water Safety

• Government to provide support to the Swim Group in the implementation of a

national communications campaign to raise awareness of curriculum swimming

and water safety.

• Government to encourage educational stakeholders, including the National

Governors Association and Unions, to work with swimming and water safety

agencies to raise awareness of curriculum requirements.

• Secondary schools to work with national water safety groups to ensure

intervention messages are strongly reinforced at Key Stage 3 and 4 to reduce the

high number of incidents in these age groups.

Water Safety in the National Curriculum

• Teacher, Parent and Pupil Awareness of Water Safety

• All schools must provide swimming instruction either in Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2. In particular, pupils should be taught to:

• Perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

• Swim Safe

Next Steps

• Due to the election and subsequent

changes within the Department of

Education the whole process has been

delayed…..

• Resource pack is being created

• Implementation Groups to be established

• Big School Swim 8 November

• So what can I do..?