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Scottish Swimming submission of 9 December 2021

PE1891/F: Make swimming lessons a statutory requirement in the primary school curriculum

Thank you to the committee for the opportunity for Scottish Swimming to share its views on the above petition and to provide some background information on our current activities related to teaching children to swim.

Scottish Swimming is the Governing Body for Swimming, Diving, Masters Swimming, Open Water Swimming, Artistic Swimming and Water Polo. Swimming is a sport for everyone and we are committed to developing the sport in an inclusive, equitable and fair way.

As a club-based membership organisation ensuring everyone can swim is critical to Scottish Swimming achieving its strategic objectives. Learning to swim competently continues to be the foundation of becoming safer in water and providing the opportunity for children to take part in aquatic activity for health and fitness or as part of a club starting on a competitive journey.

We encourage people to learn to swim via The Learn to Swim National Framework, (LTS Framework), that aims to raise standards and achieve consistency in swimming programmes across Scotland. Scottish Water, proud to support the LTS framework, have enabled us to develop the programme since 2017 and with the help of a network of delivery partners there were over 106,000 children enrolled in learn to swim programmes across the country prior to the pandemic, developing the skills they need to be safe, competent, and confident swimmers.

We have developed the LTS Framework to provide a structure for progressive lessons to be delivered in partnership with and by teachers working in Local Authorities, Leisure Trusts and swim schools. The LTS framework links to the training of swimming teachers by Scottish Swimming and the resources we provide in their ongoing development.

Despite all of the many benefits and opportunities swimming can bring, over 40% of children leave primary school unable to swim in Scotland. From an evaluation of Scottish Swimming’s LTS Framework conducted in 2018 we know that only 10.5% of children in community learn to swim classes come from the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland. It is evident there is a direct correlation between a child’s socio-economic background and their opportunity to learn to swim.

In seeking to broaden the opportunity for all children to learn to swim and reach those who cannot access a community based learn to swim programme that come at a cost to individuals, Scottish Swimming have submitted a proposal to the Scottish Government in support of a programme of school swimming. We are currently involved in discussions with sportscotland over its potential development. With the aim of providing the opportunity for all children to learn to swim we believe that any school swimming delivery should be part of the curriculum or at least delivered as part of the school day. We do recognise that in order to achieve this it will need the support and be the responsibility of Scottish Government and local authorities.

We see learning to swim and being competent, confident, and safe in and around water as an important life skill. In addition, we work in partnership with a number of agencies to promote water safety messaging, including Water Safety Scotland, and the RNLI and RLSS who we work with in support of Drowning prevention week where water safety messages and lessons are delivered as part of the LTS Framework during June and ahead of the summer holidays.

Recently we have worked with Education Scotland with an online school assembly initiative in promoting safety messaging and the risks associated with cold water shock and potential drowning.

It is recognised that there may exist a number of difficulties in delivering school swimming that vary from local authority to local authority; these may be access to a pool, transport or the availability of qualified swimming teachers to deliver lessons. In addition, gathering data to accurately understand school swimming provision across the country by each local authority would be useful to inform any future approach, potential for support and design of any potential delivery model. Scottish Swimming and sportscotland are working together to gather information to gain a better understanding of current provision using existing partnerships.