Queensland government urged to reveal how many kids are learning to swim in pools, not classrooms
Olympic swim legend Dawn Fraser want to know what percentage of Queensland children learning to swim have been in the water because she says classroom teaching is not as effective.
Education
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The state government is under pressure to reveal exactly how many children undergo swimming lessons in pools after an audit failed to provide key participation rates.
Swimming coaches – including Dawn Fraser – slammed the 11-page report for lacking details, claiming it failed to show the true number of Queensland kids unable to swim.
The audit found 14 remote schools that had no swimming program, prompting the government to announce a $500,000 funding boost
Education Minister Grace Grace said HPE teachers would also undergo swimming instruction training and announced a funding boost for rural schools following The Courier-Mail’s Save Our Schoolkids 2.0 campaign.
Before the audit, experts had been calling on the government to identify how many children were actually learning in pools, opposed to the classroom.
Steve Titmus, father of Olympic champion Ariarne, said the next step for the government was to release participation numbers.
“That would have been nice to include in the audit, but it’s a start,” Mr Titmus said.
“The monitoring of this is critical.
“In the past, we haven’t seen enough monitoring. It’s one thing to put money in but we have to ensure it’s being implemented correctly and that principals are held to account.
“There’s no time to waste.”
Four-time Olympic gold medallist Fraser said questions still remained about how many children were being taught to swim in the water.
“If it’s in a classroom, that is no good at all; they must learn to feel the water, that is how you learn to swim,” Fraser said.
“I’d like to see what percentage of the children have been in the water... getting taught on land is entirely different to being taught in the water.”
Legendary swimming coach Laurie Lawrence said the audit failed to provide a complete picture. He said water safety education and learn-to-swim were two vastly different activities.
“The biggest problem is, many headmasters decide to do water safety at school instead of taking them to a pool,” Lawrence claimed.
“It’s about kids having face-to-face lessons in the water. Not pretending when they’re in a classroom. That’s deceitful.”
Ms Grace said there was an expectation that all students from schools offering swimming programs would participate in practical and theory side.
She said participation would fluctuate daily with illnesses the main reason why children would not partake.
“We will work towards trying to find out how high it is, other than illness, what other reasons that the parents are saying they don’t want their kids to participate,” Ms Grace said.
“We will try and get the data but can I say, every week that you conduct swimming lessons there are hundreds of thousands of children, I am sure the schools would have the permissions from parents not to participate.
“I’m sure they’ve got that information. It’s not something we collect because we know this will happen week upon week.”
Mr Titmus said one would only have to walk along any Gold Coast beach to see the masses of teenagers who were unable to swim.
“A general observation, there is a high number of teenagers who cannot swim,” he said.
“They don’t have the ability to float in the float or move themselves in any competence in water above their heads. You see it every day.
“Being able to swim to a level of treading water for a couple of minutes or being able to swim 50m.
“That’s the basic confidence they need.”
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