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Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham): My question may be slightly apart from the main thrust of the debate, but does
the hon. Lady agree that we should send a message to the Amateur Swimming Association and to those who help fund the British Olympic team that getting the coaches of some of our major swimmers to join the coaching team would be of great advantage? It seems odd that coaches who help swimmers to get chosen for the team and to have a chance of winning a medal are denied the opportunity to accompany those swimmers.
Miss Hoey: The hon. Member raises an important point. Anyone involved in competitive sport realises the importance of a coach to an individual athlete. The relationship of an athlete or swimmer in the team representing their country with their coach is crucial, and I will pass on the hon. Gentleman's comment to the ASA.
The members of the Olympic team are the stars of today, but my research suggests that there is widespread concern about what is happening in schools and about how schools are teaching and providing opportunities to swim. In the 1980s, despite the undoubted link between swimming ability and safety, many schools and education authorities had no requirement at all for schools to provide swimming lessons. Although many authorities did bear the costs of pool hire, transport and the provision of instructors, and although many schools raised enormous amounts of funding for themselves, until recently there was no legal compulsion for swimming teaching to be provided by schools.
The three national governing bodies for swimming--the Royal Life Saving Society, the Amateur Swimming Association and the English Schools Swimming Association--became so alarmed at the trend that they formed the Swim for Life campaign, with the aim of securing the teaching of swimming by all schools. In 1988 the campaign surveyed local authorities and schools and found that more than half had no clear policy on the teaching of swimming and that more than 80 per cent. of local authorities could not meet the three basic standards for the provision of swimming lessons: the meeting of charges for the children, the setting of a minimum swimming standard and the specification of the minimum number of lessons to be provided.
A more recent survey by the Secondary Heads Association in the late 1980s confirmed that trend and showed that there had been a further reduction in the provision of swimming lessons. The survey showed that fewer than half the 11 to 15-year-olds had any curricular swimming whatsoever. The Swim for Life campaign lobbied for a swimming requirement to be included in the physical education section of the national curriculum and in 1991 it was successful. Here I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton), who promoted a private Member's Bill--of which I was a sponsor--to raise the awareness of the need for children to learn swimming at school.
In response to a report by the national curriculum physical education working party, the then Secretary of State for Education--now Chancellor of the Exchequer--said:
He added:
At a conference organised by the Swim for Life campaign to discuss the resource implications of the working group recommendations, the then Sports Minister--the right hon. Member for South Ribble(Mr. Atkins)--said:
The right hon. Gentleman at least recognised the importance of swimming, but he was unwilling to give a firmer lead on behalf of the Government. I wonder whether the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment who is to reply to today's debate is demonstrating his ambition to succeed his hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Sproat) and become the latest in a long line of Conservative Sports Ministers.
All schools have been provided with a programme of study for swimming that should be taught during key stage 2--for pupils aged seven to 11. If a school chooses to do so, the programme can be taught during key stage 1--for pupils aged five to seven. The programme holds that children should be taught to develop confidence in the water; to rest in water, float and adopt support positions; to develop a variety of means of propulsion using either arms or legs, or both; to develop effective and efficient swimming strokes on front and back; to swim competently, unaided, at least 25 metres; and to practise and understand the skills of water safety and survival. Those proposals came into effect on 1 August 1994.
A tremendous amount of good work is going on in the teaching of swimming in the United Kingdom and we must recognise that fact. A great number of teachers and various organisations are working on improving and disseminating best practice. The Physical Education Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland produced an in-service manual for teaching physical education, including swimming, at key stages 1 and 2 and is soon to launch a national postgraduate training programme for primary teachers who want to become curriculum specialists, in association with a network of university training providers throughout the United Kingdom. I congratulate Peter Harrison and his colleagues at the PEA on the work that they do.
The Amateur Swimming Association rightly regards education as a vital part of the job of the national governing body for swimming and invests heavily to ensure that there is an education programme for pupils, teachers and coaches. It will be doing a lot more. It has already provided some training for 17,500 swimming teachers and coaches in 1993-94, it issues 1.5 million incentive awards per year and it became the first national governing body to introduce national vocational qualifications into teaching and coaching. Good work is going on, but without a central commitment from the Government, it will not stretch to every school in the land.
The regional sports councils for greater London and the south-east region have adopted swimming as what they call a focus sport and will be devoting officers and resources to developing the sport in the next three years. The London regional sports council points out, however, that provision for children with disabilities is patchy and in many cases tuition is not being delivered by appropriately qualified teachers. Where children with disabilities are integrated into mainstream education, problems are often exacerbated by the fact that teachers are unaware of and unqualified to deal with the needs of
such children. I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the situation in relation to young children with disabilities and how he feels that that aspect of swimming is working throughout the country.
The National Union of Teachers and other teachers' unions have taken a great interest in swimming. Doug McAvoy, the general secretary of the NUT, commented:
Obviously, the responsibilities placed on teachers when young children take part in any activity involving risk are greater. Unfortunately, we have seen the demise of county and local authority advisers; swimming and physical education advisers of that sort no longer exist. Greater responsibility has therefore been placed on professional associations such as the PEA to provide the training.
There seems to be a tremendous variation between how much different local education authorities and schools spend on swimming. For the year 1992-93, approximately half the LEAs in England and Wales delegated swimming budgets to schools. According to the NUT, of those LEAs which retained swimming budgets centrally, to ensure that provision was made for school swimming, the amount varied between 26p and £17.20 per pupil. That is a very big difference and I should like the Minister to comment on the variation in the cost of swimming in different parts of the country. Does he really feel that 26p is adequate? Perhaps he does. Will he also comment on the huge disparity in provision?
The pattern is for new swimming pools to be designed as leisure pools, which seek to mimic the seaside with wave machines and water slides--fun activities and all very commendable--but according to the Sports Council only 28 pools in London meet the recommended dimensions for a learner pool. In addition, there are apparently 66 indoor pools which are adequate even if they are not quite the right length or width. Although young children enjoy leisure pools, it is difficult to learn to swim in one.
The Institute of Swimming Teachers and Coaches--another commendable organisation--has produced a good and thorough statistical report on swimming provision in schools. I commend it to the Minister and to colleagues--I presume that the Minister will have seen it. The work done by Colin Lee, the consultant, shows that, despite the inclusion of swimming in the national curriculum, less than half the infant, junior, primary, first and middle schools that he surveyed provided swimming weekly throughout the year for any given age range. Only one in 20 of the schools provided weekly swimming for pupils over more than four years at school.
The Amateur Swimming Association tells me that a school swimming pool in Dudley, which was recently refurbished, is not being used as the school has no funds to run the heating system. The ASA says that there are similar problems throughout the country and it is hearing more and more reports of local authorities making substantial cuts--there have been cuts in swimming in Cambridgeshire, restrictions in Derbyshire, constraints in Hertfordshire and two schools in Warrington have abandoned swimming completely. I ask the Minister whether anyone really knows how varied swimming provision is throughout the country. Whose job is it to monitor that?
The survey of 741 schools by the Institute of Swimming Teachers and Coaches showed that in 84 per cent. of cases children had to travel so far to a pool
that some form of coach transport was necessary. Public transport was not always possible. The increasing cost of coach travel, set against ever-increasing demands on the delegated school budget under local management of schools, is having an obvious effect. When new regulations on coach travel and seat belts come into effect this year, schools which were able to fill up a coach by transporting three very young children on two full-sized adult seats may find that they need a second coach, doubling the cost and forcing the school to reconsider the position.
While I welcome a campaign for additional safety measures in the transport of young people--there was a particularly horrific accident involving a cadet troop from my constituency several years ago--I regret that the additional costs of the safety measures may ultimately cost lives because fewer children will learn to swim. I do not want to be alarmist, but I mention that fact to see whether the Minister has thought of it and whether there is any suggestion that local authorities and schools may be able to recoup some of the extra costs that they may have to bear to transport children to go swimming because of the safety measures.
The survey also found that in 63 per cent. of cases parents were asked to contribute to the cost of coach hire for swimming lessons. That does not happen in other countries, where it is taken as a right that, if a school provides for children to go swimming, the parents do not have to pay. A further 59 per cent. of parents covered by the survey were asked to pay in part for the swimming instruction. That is all very well in some areas of the country and, indeed, in some schools--many parents will do their utmost to ensure that their child has the opportunity to participate in many non-curricular activities--but it is wrong if parents are being asked to contribute to paying for something that is part of the national curriculum and is meant to be happening in schools, particularly primary schools.
It is worth briefly comparing our commitment with the action of other countries. In France, a comprehensive swimming instruction programme has been matched with a drive ever since the 1960s to build hundreds of extra 25 m pools and provide excellent teacher's guides. In Germany, every school leaver will have received three years of swimming teaching at no cost to the family. In Holland, I understand that swimming lessons are offered across the board in school time for children aged seven and over with nationally-applied qualifications for swimming teachers and a standard test of swimming ability for children. In London, there are 47,000 people per swimming pool against 18,000 in Berlin and 15,000 in Paris.
The survey's most disappointing result was that only one in five teachers or parents teaching swimming in schools had swimming teaching qualifications. How can that be allowed? How can we claim to take the teaching of swimming in schools seriously if the Government have no central plan to tackle the swimming teacher shortage? It is not enough to have people, however enthusiastic, teaching swimming classes, even if they are lifeguard trained, if they do not now know how to teach swimming and promote stroke stamina.
When I trained as a physical education teacher, physical education was an arduous three-year course and swimming was a very important part of it. I know how much stamina and strength are needed to qualify as a swimming teacher. The matter has not been treated seriously enough by local authority education departments or by some schools.
Another side effect of the resource implications of Government restrictions has been that some local authorities have been forced to put their leisure centres out to contract. That is not necessarily always a bad thing, but as the balance sheet mentality takes over, more leisure centres feel the pressure to charge more to schools for lessons and to consider different sorts of clientele who can pay more for the use of the facilities. That is affecting schools and the school use of swimming pools.
In my constituency, Steve White, a very good head of physical education at Charles Edward Brooke school, has been telling me how difficult it is to hire swimming pools even if schools have the money. There is far less opportunity to hire time in a swimming pool when it is free of other users. Children are taken to swimming pools that the public are using. That can make the proper teaching of swimming difficult.
If the Minister is serious about ensuring that proper attention is paid to swimming in schools, we need more information. Perhaps he will agree to commission the Institute of Swimming Teachers and Coaches to carry out a nationwide study to give us the national picture.
I am a long-time supporter of the national lottery, which has had some positive effects. To date, it has offered funding to 43 swimming applications, almost exclusively for new pool developments, out of a total of 1,027 grants across all sports. Swimming has received £42 million, which is 23 per cent. of the £179 million paid in lottery awards by the Sports Council. The average award is £970,000 per pool because of the high capital cost.
Of the 43 successful swimming applications, only five involve school pools. That is a problem because the more schools that have their own pools, even if they are small, the more travelling costs are cut and the easier it is for schools to have swimming as a genuine part of their curriculums. I know that the Secretary of State for National Heritage is considering the problem that applications for lottery funding must have a certain amount of other money. The small number of school-related grants is partly because there have not been many applications from schools because of the various difficulties and restrictions on application. I hope that the Minister will consider that and have a word with the Secretary of State.
I have a good new idea that would change the face of swimming in London. Hon. Members may have seen in the Evening Standard a couple of weeks ago the announcement of plans to build a lido swimming pool floating on the Thames near the House of Commons on the opposite side of the river. It would be beside Gabriel's wharf in the Waterloo area. It would be called the Thames Lido and is being promoted by the excellent Coin Street Community Builders in my constituency and has been designed by Lifschutz Davidson. It proposes not only to tackle the lack of swimming provision in the north of my constituency and the London borough of Southwark but to consider ways of making swimming imaginative and
interesting. It may have a roof that could move back and forth so that people can swim throughout the winter. People would have the feeling that they were swimming in the river as they would be in the river, but not in river water--not many people would want to swim in the Thames.
I hope that the proposal will succeed. National lottery funding will be crucial, but we are clear that if it is to happen there will have to be an arrangement whereby local schools and communities will have the opportunity to use the pool to learn to swim and to have their classes. There is a dearth of swimming pools in the borough of Lambeth and across the northern part of south London.
I have mentioned the English Schools Swimming Association, but there is another good organisation that works in London--the London Schools Swimming Association. Brenda Sullivan is its long-time secretary and it recently held an anniversary celebration that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) and I attended. I give his apologies as he is serving on the Noise Bill Committee this morning. I am supposed to be in that Committee, too, but he has stayed there as he is promoting the Bill. I know of his interest in swimming.
The London Schools Swimming Association does an enormous amount to maintain swimming galas and competitions, despite all the difficulties. It, too, has called attention to the shortage of pools, the insufficient training of teachers and volunteers and the growing costs of transport. On the restriction to key stage 2 of a definite requirement for swimming in the national curriculum, Brenda Sullivan comments:
We know how few schools in the maintained sector have swimming pools. It is interesting that few of the fee-paying schools for which parents pay a lot of money do not offer swimming pools--usually indoors, which is even better. The independent sector, where people are prepared to pay lots of money, regards swimming as important. It is the Government's responsibility to ensure that as many schools as possible have ready access to swimming pools.
Brenda Sullivan stresses that more has to be done to encourage school competitions, which used to be more regular. When schools compete together in a friendly way, they learn the benefits of competition. They learn how to lose and win properly. I am afraid that such competitions no longer happen in the way that they used to. There may be many reasons for that, but crucially, schools do not have the opportunity, within the tight restrictions of curriculum and costs, to stage activities that are not clearly related to the curriculum but that give the benefits of swimming to children in a fun way.
The London Schools Swimming Association is concerned that children are simply struggling through their 25 metres. If children cannot swim with confidence and with stamina, the lessons must continue. Does the Minister realise that in many cases, once children can swim 25 metres with difficulty, that is their last opportunity to take swimming lessons? Primary schools are relieved to have fulfilled that part of the national curriculum and, because of other restrictions, they stop providing swimming lessons. Therefore, many children do not have the opportunity to swim throughout their primary schooling.
There is more involved than simply the ability to swim--although that is important. Stamina and confidence while in the water are not achieved by attending the two or three lessons that will get children through their 25 metres. Roger Millward of the Swimming Teachers Association tells me
Primary schools in my constituency take varying approaches to swimming. Sometimes it is only the children in their final year who receive swimming lessons and sometimes it is the top two classes. Some schools are committed to teaching swimming, despite all the difficulties, and all the children in those schools swim every week.
Walnut Tree Walk primary school in my area is absolutely convinced of the importance of swimming--not just for safety reasons, but in view of the health aspects and the comradeship associated with a worthwhile activity that everyone enjoys--and it ensures that every child at the school takes swimming lessons every week. That imposes a massive burden on the school in terms of transport costs and time. All the children are transported by coach to the pool in Clapham, they spend only a short time in the pool and then have to travel back to the school. The activity also takes a number of teachers away from the school.
I believe that swimming is a valuable activity and that all schools should receive assistance to allow every child--like those at Walnut Tree Walk--to take swimming lessons. At present, it is pot luck whether primary schools in my constituency and across the country are able to provide such opportunities.
A number of problems need urgent attention. Does the Minister accept that, in view of the obviously sketchy provision of swimming teaching across the country, someone should take a definite lead? I am not quite sure which Government Department will take the lead, as the activity crosses the boundaries of responsibility for schools, local authorities and sport generally. How can schools do their job and take their responsibilities seriously if the national curriculum, and the Government's checking and monitoring of it, fail to ensure that teachers are adequately prepared? That is crucial to organising the proper teaching of swimming in our schools.
The Physical Education Association, which seeks to maintain standards in physical education teaching, has said that a postgraduate student undertaking the general postgraduate certificate course can spend as little as 12 hours per year on the whole subject of physical education, of which swimming is just a part. The PEA recommends that all generalist primary teachers should devote a minimum of 60 hours initial teacher training to physical education. In my view that is not enough, but I am perhaps slightly biased in that regard. We must also provide career-long training for teachers by significantly increasing the funding for in-service teacher training. It is no wonder that there are reports of teachers who cannot swim conducting swimming lessons.
Swimming is one of the main recreational activities in the United Kingdom. It is ranked second in the top 10 sports for men and women, according to the 1990 general
household survey. The increase in adult swimming has shifted the balance in pool use. Whereas children once outnumbered adults at swimming pools by three to one, the figure has now reached parity as more adults and fewer children swim. The sex ratio has also changed: indeed, it has been reversed: there are now three women swimming for every two men.
"I note the group's firm recommendation on swimming. This . . . would have serious practical implications for many schools. I shall need to consider them in the light of what you and those commenting on your report have to say about their feasibility."
"it is not part of the group's remit to make recommendations on the resources to be provided for PE. I would expect your recommendations to be realistically related to the general level of school funding which can reasonably be expected to be available."
27 Mar 1996 : Column 967
"Our concern has to be with resources, and whether all maintained primary schools would be able to deliver swimming lessons for all pupils."
"There is a much heavier burden of responsibility on teachers who undertake to teach swimming or act as a lifeguard".
"It appears that many secondary school children do not have swimming lessons unless they have a school pool."
"the general feedback from our members is that due to strict budgets swimming is severely curtailed and either not enough time has been allocated to this sport within the academic year which makes it difficult to provide a continuous, progressive teaching system, or alternatively the absolute minimum is achieved and then the lessons stop."
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