Schoolchildren: Swimming
Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Lord Cryer(1 day, 10 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Cryer
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the levels of swimming attainment among school children.
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, swimming and water safety are vital life skills, and every child should have the opportunity to learn how to swim and how to keep themself safe around water before they leave primary school. The latest figures indicate that 73% of children can swim 25 metres by the time they leave primary school. We are focused on improving that figure through our forthcoming changes to the curriculum and the support for schools to deliver PE and sport.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
I am grateful to my noble friend, but I have a slightly different figure for 11 year-olds. According to Swim England, only one in four 11 year-olds leaving primary school can swim 25 metres. That is not entirely unrelated to the fact that we have lost 500 pools in the last 16 years. That is not the gross figure; that is the net figure.
Will my noble friend undertake to publish all information and statistics relating to school swimming attainment? Will she also undertake to work with Ministers at the DCMS, among others, to drive up the number of pools, so that the number of operating pools at the end of this Parliament is greater than at the beginning? Will she also undertake to work with Swim England, among others, to reverse this downward trend and make sure that we have more children able to swim when they finish primary school? The bottom line is that swimming is the one sport that can make the difference between life and death.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Starting with the last point first, we are already working with Swim England, among others, to improve both the resource and the curriculum when it comes to swimming and water safety. My noble friend is right about the big fall in pools between 2010 and 2026. In fact, I have a slightly higher figure than 500: my figure is 591 fewer pools. Of course, that is a challenge not only for schools but for local government. I know it is something that colleagues at the DCMS are not only concerned about but have also included in the additional investment they are providing for community facilities.
Young People: Sporting Activities
Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Lord Cryer(9 months, 4 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a very important point. It partly relates to the extent to which we can provide a whole range of opportunities for people to engage in activity, and the way we use the new partnership arrangements locally to see what sort of provision is available and how we can link schools more easily to that local provision, which may well come from and be promoted by different parts of the community. This must be an approach that ensures everybody has the opportunity to benefit from the obvious advantages that come from being more active and taking part in sport.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, for many years now, schoolchildren have been losing access to swimming pools; pool time has been in decline. That is clearly not the fault of the present Government. However, we are where we are. We need to stop that decline and reverse it so that schoolchildren increasingly have access to pools, not just to create the champions of the future but to save lives, because swimming is the one sport that might make a difference between living and dying.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why it is a key part of the national curriculum that children should be able to swim before the age of 11. It is why the ongoing commitment to the primary PE and sport premium, which is funded for the next academic year at £320 million, can also be—and has been—used to ensure that there is access to swimming facilities and water safety in the way my noble friend outlined. We also need to ensure that local authorities recognise the importance of swimming pools so that everybody can benefit.