School Swimming Support Programme 2010
I’m sure colleagues all agree that learning to swim either with school, at home or a combination of both contributes to the ECM outcomes of Staying Safe, Be Healthy and Enjoy and Achieve, and is an essential life skill for our young people living in Devon. The partnership has received funding over the past 4 years for so called "Top Up Swimming". To date this has been a targeted intervention programme available to all primary schools in the partnership for Year 6 pupils who have not achieved the 25m minimum National Curriculum standard: with the programme being delivered in an intensive way over 5 consecutive days in June and July. About 10 percent of Year 6 pupils across the partnership have benefited each year. It is clear that potential non-swimmers can be identified early and that if an intervention programme could be put in early i.e. with an extra swim teacher/instructor allocated early for those less confident young people, there would be less likelihood of those young people not achieving at the end of the normal school provision. Delivering the support in this way would greatly reduce costs with no extra pool hire or transport costs required. We could also offer the support at the best time for schools themselves i.e. when you are doing your normal swimming provision at any time or stage between Years 3 to 6. For this academic year we are going to trial this new approach. The partnership has received funding for approximately 300 hours of extra tuition. Each swimming centre or pool will be allocated a proportion of these hours based on the number of young people in each Learning Community. We recommend that each school works closely with their pool and the swimming teachers involved so that; early in the school’s swimming programme the extra help can be initiated. Aquarius Swim School in Barnstaple have offered their help and advice on a voluntary basis to the partnership to support this new way of working. The partnership greatly appreciates Lisa Bousted from Aquarius acting in this "School Swimming Consultant" role. If extra swim teachers are needed Aquarius are willing help supply teachers at the usual rate. If you would like advice on early identification of non-swimmers and suggested interventions to support their road to success, please feel free to contact Lisa (schools that currently use Aquarius Swim School will automatically receive this support programme). Your next step is to speak to your local pool and the instructors about the progress of your groups from now until the end of the year July 2010. Should you have older pupils who are still non-swimmers, could we suggest that they join in with your younger pupils and you ask for the additional instructor help when you are running your usual provision.
A record of the number of young people benefiting from this extra programme together with their; gender, ethnicity and if they are a pupil with SENs will need to be collated. A simple form will be circulated to collect this data. If you have any questions about this new way of delivering the swimming support please don’t hesitate to call Paul Marshall (ND PEDPASS) or Lisa Bousted (Aquarius) on the following numbers:
Paul 07875 010 411
Lisa 07990 854 976
