Swimming is a life skill worth fighting for
During the last school summer holiday I had the same thought lots of local parents had and decided to take the children to Jesus Green Lido.
The perfect place to go on a sweltering day. I roped in another mum and we piled over with picnics and five children.
Our children, who are all under 12, are mixed ability swimmers. I imagined the less confident children would have fun splashing around with each other in the shallow end. The older, more competent ones could be left to jump in at the deep end. As we all know, from our own happy memories, it’s this kind of fun that builds water confidence and a lifelong love of swimming.
My expectation had been hours of pool-fun for our children, followed by picnic and ice creams eaten under the trees. Even though there was the option to book ‘swim for leisure’, the pool only had one lane available for children. Children were allowed to ‘fun’ swim in the slowest lane, though unhelpfully, adults were also trying to swim there. The remaining two-thirds of the pool was for faster lane swimming.
While the pool might be famously long, it’s not very wide (14 metres if you’re interested), so this meant one small corner in the shallow end was packed with learners and their parents. As there was little chance to do ‘fun swimming’- no handstands, no diving under the water and no splashing around - children got cold and bored very quickly. The older children jumped in a couple of times but soon gave up.
I thought back to this disappointing day when I read that 25 per cent of children are leaving primary school unable to swim. Covid restrictions and the cost of living crisis have helped create this perfect storm. Many children haven’t taken up their lessons again and others, like mine, regressed and had to go back a level. Now as heating and food bills shoot up, parents are cutting back on swimming lessons.
The energy crisis is hitting the swimming pools too. Swimming pools are having to reduce the temperature of the water to cope with their own rising bills. To make an already difficult situation worse, there is a national shortage of swimming teachers - which any parent stuck on a waiting list will be well aware of.
Swim England are worried that by 2025 most primary aged children won’t be able to swim one length. Their research revealed only 4 per cent of 11-year-olds are what could be described as competent swimmers. That means being able to swim 100 metres, ‘float to live’ (for 60 seconds) and tread water (30 seconds). This comes with dire health consequences. Swimming is the one after school club that could be life saving.
They also found that 72 per cent of parents said they hadn’t been swimming with their children in the last month or even longer. This doesn’t surprise me. Taking my own children swimming to our local public pools has started to feel a bit pointless. Like our lido experience, they don’t seem to do much swimming. We squeeze into a small diving pool, which is often accommodating a mixture of babies in arms to young teens. It’s an unsatisfactory combination for everyone. It’s often too crowded and too small to do any swimming. Children opt to go down the flumes, which is fun but they spend more time on the steps than in the water. Better swimmers can join a lane in the larger pool but we are still left with the feeling that children aged between eight and 14 aren’t able to do the kind of swimming they really enjoy or need to develop skills.
What can be done? Our public pools are at capacity and private pool membership is expensive. If we want to avoid this catastrophe we must find ways to prioritise our children. They need lessons but they also need the space outside of lesson time to swim. It’s a life skill worth fighting for.
Read more Parenting Truths from Emilie Silverwood-Cope every month in the Cambridge Independent.
