By North East Lincolnshire swim teacher concerned third of children can’t swim
A local swimming teacher is concerned as new figures show that roughly a third of children in the UK do not know how to swim.
According to research conducted by the Swimming Teachers Association, a third of UK children are unable to swim as parents struggle with a lack of time and money to teach them.
STA, a leading educational charity dedicated to the teaching of swimming and lifesaving skills, conducted an independent survey with more than 2,000 parents in the UK with children aged 0-16 years.
Kaylë Burgham, Head of Aquatics at STA said: “Of greatest concern is the research finding that 1 in 3 children between the ages of 10-16 currently cannot swim, and especially when you consider this age group makes up one of the highest percentage of drownings in the UK.”
The aim of the study was to understand the main reasons why children are currently not learning to swim.
15% of parents surveyed said it’s because they don’t have the time to teach them, 20% blamed the cost2 and over a quarter admitted they don’t like the water themselves or can’t swim themselves.
Three quarters of parents in STA’s survey admitted that they wish they were better swimmers.
Despite 9 in 10 parents agreeing that swimming is a life skill, almost half of parents say they don’t go swimming with their children. Almost three quarters of parents said they worry that their children are not confident swimmers.
Jane Hill is a swim school supervisor from Lincs Inspire which runs leisure facilities in Grimsby, Cleethorpes, and Immingham.
She told Planet radio why it’s concerning so many don’t know how to swim.
“Once a child reaches the age of 8 a child is allowed into a swimming pool without an adult so I think they need to be able to swim and be safe.”
“Plus we’re surrounded by water in this area with beaches and rivers so they do need to be able to swim, it’s very important for children.”
“Most of us are doing school swimming which is very busy, always trying to help the school so the children get that very important 25 metre badge and that they can tread water.”
“We are struggling for swimming teachers so that’s one of our biggest problems at the moment which I think a lot of swim schools are finding.”
“We’re not running our full capacity at the moment due to not having enough teachers.”
“We were closed during Covid obviously, when we were able to open because of social distancing it was such limited spaces.”
