Primary Schools: Swimming Lessons

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I was reminiscing about a previous life in which we worked together as Ministers to considerably increase the sporting opportunities for children in our schools and for people more widely. She is absolutely right to identify that, although it is obviously important that children learn, as the national curriculum suggests, to swim 25 metres by the time they finish primary school, there is much more to swimming as an opportunity for life than simply meeting that standard, important though it is. We need to think about how schools can provide more opportunities for broader sporting activity, including swimming, and, of course, how our community facilities, which have been reduced in recent years, can support the broadest possible engagement, including from those children whose parents are perhaps less able to take them for swimming lessons and activities than is the case at the moment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of the Royal Life Saving Society. The Minister will know that, in the 10 to 16 age group, one in three young people cannot swim; that is the group with the highest occurrence of drowning. More shockingly, within the black community, 95% of adults and 80% of children cannot swim; the figures are roughly the same in the Asian community. These are shocking figures. Does the Minister agree that it is time we had an action plan so we can ensure that every child who leaves school can swim?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point about the discrepancies in achievement in children’s swimming. He is absolutely right that if someone comes from a well-off background they are more than 80% likely to have fulfilled the requirement, whereas that goes down to a third for someone from a poorer background. As he also rightly says, there is a real difference depending on someone’s ethnic background. That is completely unsatisfactory.

Although work is ongoing through the Inclusion 2024 project to try to ensure that more children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, get access to swimming, the noble Lord is right that there is more we all need to do together, and across government, to ensure that children meet the required standard by the time they leave primary school. Furthermore, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, identified in her previous question, we need to ensure that they are also able to get the enjoyment and opportunities that come from being able to swim confidently.