Water Safety Education

Debate between Jim Shannon and Lord Cryer

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Westminster Hall

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of water safety education in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank Mr Speaker for choosing this debate, which I am delighted to have secured. It is on a subject that is of great importance to me as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on swimming, and I am sure that it is a matter of interest and concern for Members on both sides of the House. I also want briefly to thank both Philip Brownlie, head of public affairs at Swim England—it used to be the Amateur Swimming Association, in my day—for all his help in securing the debate and with my speech, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), the chair of the all-party group.

Swimming has been a genuine passion of mine for many years. I started to swim at the age of five or six and I have swum with various swimming clubs, such as Leyton ASC, Hornchurch ASC and East Grinstead Tri Club. I want every child to have the kind of opportunity that I and many others had when we were growing up. If we can develop children’s physical literacy through good-quality, positive experiences at school, we can set them up for a lifelong love of being active.

Swimming is obviously a sport, but it is probably the only sport that might save someone’s life at some point. Figures shared with me by the Royal Life Saving Society show that the number of child drownings is increasing at an alarming rate. In my view, that is not unconnected to the net loss of swimming pools in this country of about 400 over the past decade. In 2022, there was a 46% increase in the number of child drownings against the five-year average, and although the 2023 data has not been officially published, early indications suggest that child drownings may have increased significantly again last year.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate on what, for me, is a critical issue. In my constituency, many young people and children in particular have died while swimming. In the figures that he referred to, 35 accidental child fatalities were reported. That is a classroom full of children. That gives us an idea of the magnitude of the issue. Does he agree that consideration should be given to a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland awareness campaign, alongside the education systems in the devolved nations, to ensure that children have an understanding of basic water safety, and how to be safe and keep safe?

[John Cryer]

I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will not comment on the devolved nations, but he speaks very eloquently.

When the figures are adjusted for socioeconomic status and ethnicity, there are worrying elements in the child mortality data. The National Child Mortality Database reported that the risk of drowning was twice as high among children from poorer backgrounds as among those from better-off backgrounds, and that the risk of drowning was three and a half times higher for children from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. For me, that is a particular worry, because I represent one of the most diverse constituencies in the country.

The debate is very timely, particularly when we consider that we are fast approaching the summer and that 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of swimming’s inclusion in the national curriculum. For all these reasons, it is important that we have this debate today and that the importance of swimming and water safety is highlighted in this place.

Figures from the latest Sport England Active Lives survey of children show that 71% of children in year 7 are able to swim 25 metres, which represents a fall of 6.3% compared with five years ago. Worryingly, pupils are also being offered fewer swimming lessons at school. That is raised with me just about every time I visit a school in my constituency. Swim England has also seen concerning examples of parents being asked to pay for their children’s school swimming lessons, which risks exacerbating existing inequalities. I represent some of the poorest wards in London, so that is very relevant to my daily work.

I pay tribute to the many hard-working teachers in Leyton and Wanstead and across the country. I recognise that teaching swimming and water safety presents a number of serious challenges, particularly under current circumstances. On top of that, school staff are often underqualified, underprepared and inexperienced when it comes to delivering comprehensive physical education. That is not a criticism of the teachers, but a criticism of the lack of resources. More qualified and prepared school staff would enable smaller ratios and higher-quality teaching to make the most of limited learning time for pupils.

Organisations such as Swim England produce free resources, including the school swimming and water safety charter, to support teachers, as well as running courses such as the national curriculum training programme for primary school teachers, but the Department for Education and Ofsted have been a bit too reluctant to adequately monitor and enforce the curriculum requirements. Although schools are required to publish their swimming and water safety attainment levels in order to receive PE premium funding, evidence suggests that many are not doing so. Could the Minister share the number of schools that the Department has taken action against for not meeting that requirement since its introduction? PE premium funding itself is only guaranteed until the end of the 2024-25 academic year. Could the Minister confirm that the requirement to provide that data directly to the Department will remain, regardless of what might happen to PE premium funding?

PE premium funding has helped schools offer top-up swimming lessons, but I cannot help feeling that providing schools with enough core funding to deliver appropriate school swimming lessons would be a better way to proceed. The Minister may or may not be aware that in Estonia, for example, pupils receive 40 hours of school swimming lessons paid for by the Government.

A 2023 Ofsted report on PE described swimming and water safety attainment as “mixed” and stated that

“evaluation of the swimming and water safety element of the curriculum is limited”.

It recommended that primary school schools should ensure that

“their curriculum matches the breadth and ambition of the national curriculum for all pupils. It should include carefully sequenced and taught swimming and water safety lessons”.

I would like the Department to be much more active in monitoring and enforcing curriculum requirements, a point that members of the Swim Alliance have raised with me. The alliance, which is chaired by Debbie Kaye of the Chief Cultural and Leisure Officers Association, is a grouping of organisations from across the sector, including pool operators and groups such as the Black Swimming Association, Unity Swimming and Swim England.

Organisations such as the Youth Sport Trust, the Association for Physical Education and Swim England have proposed that PE should be made a core subject. I wonder whether the Minister might consider that in order to help PE obtain the profile and support in schools that it merits.

The growth in the number of pop-up pools is broadly welcome, but their small size and shallow depth means that it is impossible for them to meet curriculum requirements, and local authorities have raised concerns about the impact that increased use of pop-up pools could have on existing community facilities.

I want to allow time for my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green to speak and for the Minister to respond, but we cannot discuss water safety without discussing access to pools for pupils to learn in. Part of my constituency—three wards—is in the London Borough of Redbridge, which, according to Swim England, is the third most deprived local authority in the country with regard to available water space. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that just 20% of children across all ages in Redbridge can swim 25 metres, compared with 75% in Wandsworth. If we are to improve water safety, we must ensure that we have the pools we need for the future.

To summarise my views very briefly, schools need to be adequately resourced and able to provide swimming and water safety opportunities. School leadership groups need to prioritise swimming and water safety in schools. School swimming and water safety need more hands-on monitoring and enforcement from the DFE and Ofsted. As a country, we desperately need to invest in the community pools we need for the future, with both capital funding and revenue funding, so that swimming is an affordable activity. If we do all that, we can start to make the sort of progress that I am sure everyone across the House wants to see.

Finally, I mentioned that my three of my wards are in Redbridge; the other six are in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where we have seen enormous core funding cuts. As I said at the beginning of my speech, just about every school I visit, in both Waltham Forest and Redbridge, has raised the difficulty of getting access to pool time for swimming. With that, I had better stop speaking and give others a chance to contribute.