Schools: Swimming and Life-saving Skills

Lord Dunlop Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dunlop (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on securing this short debate and on the thoughtful way in which he introduced it. I declare my interest as a board member of Scottish Swimming. The benefits of sport to physical and mental well-being are well documented and beyond dispute. This is particularly true of swimming, which is one of those sports that can be enjoyed at all ages and by people of all abilities throughout life. It is no surprise, therefore, that swimming remains one of the most popular mass-participation sports in the country, with 2.5 million people swimming at least once a week. The ability to swim is also essential for at least 20 other water-based sports, such as canoeing, rowing or sailing, but what sets swimming apart from other sports is that it is a key life and life-saving skill, which every child has a right, and should have the opportunity, to acquire.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned drowning and it is a sad fact that accidental drowning is the third-highest cause of death in children. Talking from my own Scottish experience, in Scotland the total of accidental drownings is 50 per year. That is 50 too many and almost double the rate of drowning in the UK as a whole. Perhaps this is explained by Scotland’s extensive and varied coastline.

As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned, in England the importance of swimming has been recognised by virtue of the fact that it is a compulsory part of the national curriculum, and has been since 1994. I will again draw a contrast with Scotland, where education is devolved to the Scottish Government—happily, the Minister therefore does not have responsibility for it. There the system is different. Swimming is neither mandatory nor part of the curriculum, although I hope this is something the Scottish Government will now look at.

However, one of the features of devolution is the scope to adopt different approaches in different parts of the country and then to share experiences across the UK of what does and does not work. In that spirit, perhaps the Minister, when he winds up, could say what, if any, discussions there have been between his department and the Scottish Government to share best practice. There is certainly very close co-operation and a shared vision among the swimming governing bodies in England, Scotland and Wales. We all want to ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn to swim at primary school and that no child leaves school unable to swim with confidence.

I too congratulate the Government on the action they have taken. Swim England has acknowledged the Government’s consistent support for school swimming. I welcome the fact that, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the Government, established in 2016 a working group to consider the challenges of delivering curriculum swimming and water safety lessons and have since acted on its recommendations. In particular, primary schools are now able to use the extra funding from the PE and sport premium to top up swimming lessons and to provide extra teacher training. This action is certainly timely, because there is still a mountain to climb—or perhaps more appropriately when talking about swimming, a gulf to cross—to arrive where we need to be.

Some of the working group’s 2017 findings on primary school delivery of swimming at key stages 1 and 2 are troubling: 26% of primaries are either not currently providing swimming lessons or not recording any attainment levels; 27% are providing lessons but not getting the results on any of the three national curriculum outcomes; and 11% are providing lessons but getting results on only one of the outcomes—swimming 25 metres unaided. That leaves 36% of primary schools providing lessons with all children reaching the national curriculum standards.

As part of the package of changes introduced by the Government last year, my understanding is that primary schools are now required to publish their swimming and water safety attainment levels as a condition for receiving funding under the PE and sport premium. If this is so, it is clearly welcome and will improve levels of accountability. Can the Minister confirm that this is indeed the case, and can he provide any recent data, two years on, to show whether the picture is improving?

The challenges in Scotland are similar. Over 30% of children in Scotland leave primary school unable to swim. For those from the most deprived backgrounds, school swimming is likely to be their only opportunity to learn to swim. In Scotland, 25% of children aged between five and 12 take part in community Learn to Swim programmes. The majority of these children are from the 20% least deprived areas of Scotland. Only 10% of those taking part come from the most deprived parts of Scotland, so school swimming has a vital role to play. However, a quarter of Scotland’s local authorities —8 out of 32—do not offer a primary school swimming programme, and those that do vary between schools opting in and comprehensive programmes. The picture is very varied.

The relevance of the Scottish experience for England is that, for five years, until it was ended in 2015, the Scottish Government supported school swimming through investment in a national top-up swimming programme. Most of the funding was used to improve the quality of the school swimming programmes by reducing child-to-teacher ratios, which in many cases were as high as 25:1. This funding was starting to make a difference, with some areas reporting a 5% to 10% increase in the number of children achieving the Scottish triple swimming standard and increasing the number of children in the most deprived areas learning to swim.

The lesson from the Scottish experience is that relatively modest levels of investment, effectively targeted, can have a disproportionately beneficial impact. Although funding was not extended beyond 2015, it is encouraging that there appears to be a renewed willingness on the part of the Scottish Government to explore what practical steps are needed to ensure that every child in Scotland can swim.

In conclusion, whether north or south of the border, the aspirations and the challenges are similar. If our children are to acquire this lifelong skill, it is important that their initial experience of swimming needs to be fun and positive. That is why school swimming programmes should not be about simply the numbers game, about how many children we can get through the programme. Quality is critical, and quality means: first, sufficient and consistent availability of properly trained swimming teachers, with the time to get to know the kids and sufficient pool time in modern facilities to make a difference; secondly, effective communication between pool operators or swim schools and primary schools so that one hand knows what the other is doing, and attainment is accurately recorded and passed on; thirdly, overcoming transport issues and getting easily from school to pool without taking too much time out of the weekly timetable; and fourthly, the ability to cater for diverse and special needs.

All this will help to secure better buy-in from both primary teachers and parents and to enhance prospects of success. The Government’s aspirations are rightly ambitious. Of course, there are considerable challenges to overcome but, overall, things appear to be moving in the right direction, but we need to move further and faster.