Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to introduce a statutory requirement to provide primary school (a) teaching and (b) support staff with (i) training and (ii) regular up-skilling in swimming and water safety; and if he will ensure that all pupils of primary age have adequate opportunities to access publicly-funded swimming facilities.

Swimming is a vital life skill, which is why swimming and water safety are compulsory elements of the national curriculum physical education (PE) at key stages 1 and 2. It sets out the expectation that pupils should be taught to:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres;
• use a range of strokes effectively; and
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

The government asked the Swim Group, which includes representatives from across the swimming and education sector, to submit an independent report setting out recommendations for improving curriculum swimming, as part of the Sporting Future strategy. The department has worked closely with Swim England and other members of the Swim group to review the recommendations in their report. In October 2018, we announced that schools would receive extra support to help all pupils to swim and know how to be safe in the water by the time they leave primary school. This included guidance to schools on:

• effective use of the PE and sport premium to support additional teacher training and top-up swimming for those children not yet able to meet the national curriculum requirements after core lessons;
• a drive to boost partnerships between independent schools to offer the use of facilities, coaching and other forms of support to schools in their area;
• new guidance from Swim England and the Swim Group for swimming providers, primary schools, swimming teachers and parents and carers.

Information on school swimming pools is not held centrally. Since 2012, Sport England has invested £67 million into 46 new local authority facilities which include pools, resulting in around £700 million investment from those authorities. In addition, Sport England is currently working with around 100 local authorities which have plans for new pool provision.

Sport England also provide guidance to local authorities on facility management options and specifications, this guidance is currently under review and will be available in the forthcoming months.

The new guidance will contain information on pool programming from Swim England and will reference good practice where facility management organisations have worked in cooperation with primary schools to improve logistics in relation to delivery of school swimming.