$16m school swim lesson funding dwarfed by other state’s cash pool

Queensland’s school swimming program is allocated less than a quarter of the funds the Victorian government’s flagship water safety program costs.

Queensland’s school swimming program is allocated less than a quarter of the funds the Victorian government’s flagship water safety program costs.

More than $72m has been allocated by the Victorian program over the 2021-2024 forward estimates, dwarfing Queensland’s commitment of almost $4m per year – or about $16m over four years.

In a PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by Royal Life Saving Australia, Victoria’s Swimming in Schools program was lauded as providing “significant water safety education with opportunities for repetition and skill development through primary school”.

Victoria’s school based program also aims for kids to attain the “skills and knowledge” in the Victorian Water Safety Certificate by the time they finish primary school – with 25,000 certificates anticipated to be awarded in 2022.

On Queensland’s school based program, the report found “while some support exists to deliver water safety education in schools, no consistent statewide programs exist to ensure students meet the benchmarks.

Mykaela Vicary before her swimming lessons at the Biggenden pool. Photo Erica Murree / Central & North Burnett Times

Father of Olympic swimming champion Ariarne, Steve Titmus, this week said kids should be able to swim by the time they get to high school, as a minimum standard.

“You shouldn’t go to high school unless you have a certificate to swim,” he said.

“It should be part of the enrolment into a school, the fact that you’ve got a certificate and you know how to swim.”

With about 900 primary schools, the Queensland’s government’s $4m in core funding and additional grants – which was boosted from about $1m per year following the Ministerial water safety roundtable established in 2018 – is approximately $4500 for each school. It doesn’t include extra costs to support pools and lessons, such as infrastructure, maintenance or safety courses.

Warrego MP Ann Leahy said access to swimming pools for children was crucial when it came to kids learning to swim, and was a particular challenge in rural and regional areas of the state.

She said in her electorate there were 42 state schools – and kids at half of them would have to travel to attend a swimming pool, some as much as 100km.

“It’s one thing to mandate it (swimming lessons), but you’ve got to make sure people have access,” she said.

The Courier-Mail revealed earlier this week Queensland has 200 fewer publicly accessible swimming pools than New South Wales, and has one of the lowest percentages of people living within a 20-minute drive of a facility in the country.

Queensland also had more than twice the number of children drowning than NSW and Victoria. Overall 16 kids drowned in the state from July 2021, to June 2022.

VICSWIM, a government-backed school holiday program where more than 13,000 school kids aged 4 to 12 participate in five days of swimming lessons over the school holidays for just $35, was also highlighted in the report as offering “low-cost access to swimming lessons, with many options available for participants in regional areas.

The report found no government-funded school holiday swimming program operates in Queensland.

Education Minister Grace Grace this week put out a statement saying she would “like to reassure families that swimming lessons are already compulsory in all Queensland state primary schools”.

She also said a “one size fits all approach” to the state’s swimming program would not work, and “parents and carers who think these lessons should be delivered differently to talk to their local school in the first instance, and of course if there are examples of schools not delivering what they’re required to, we want to fix that”.