The swimming carnival is nearly over and will cost lives

The swimming race was once an Australian ritual as school children learnt to swim in Olympic pools and dreamed of emulating Dawn Fraser, Murray Rose, the Konrads, Shane Gould, Kieren Perkins and Ian Thorpe.

Fusing a sense of national pride and a practical safety skill was a truly unique Australian achievement, enthusiastically endorsed by schools in the city and the bush through sports days and swimming carnivals.

Ian Thorpe (right) and Grant Hackett after winning gold and silver in the 400m freestyle at Athens 2004.Credit: Craig Golding

But those days have faded. New research by Royal Life Saving Australia found one in four schools around Australia had abandoned the annual swimming carnival, while others limited participation to swimmers who trained with squads. Even then, only 50 per cent of eligible students competed in school swimming carnivals.

Dr Justin Scarr, the chief executive of Royal Life Saving Australia, said the decline in swimming lessons and school carnivals threatened lives.

“This new research further amplifies long-held concerns that many young people lack the swimming skills to enjoy the water safely,” he said.

“We risk creating a generation with extremely poor swimming skills.”

The research into skills and lessons was based on two national surveys. The first was of 1234 parents, 63 per cent female and mostly parents with children nine years and older. The second was of 326 public and private school teachers – mostly physical education teachers, sports co-ordinators and principals – about swimming skills and lessons.

Teachers estimated 48 per cent of year 6 swimmers could not swim 50 metres or tread water for two minutes, and 39 per cent of year 10 students could not meet year 6 benchmarks either.

Across Australia, 31 per cent of schools do not even offer learn-to-swim programs, citing cost, staffing shortages and time limitations. Surprisingly perhaps, when it came to swimming carnivals, 40 per cent of schools blamed a lack of support and interest among parents and students.

In any case, swimming generally has gone under as children and teenagers have embraced a plethora of alternative passive pastimes that were previously nonexistent, such as video games.

Families have also become increasingly time-poor with both parents working, many dealing with heavy workloads and long commutes, while swimming has been relegated to being considered a luxury for those where were better off.

Those who wished to protect their children have turned to expensive private swimming lessons. However, while 59 per cent of children who start swimming lessons before the age of three, most stop between 7 and 9, often before learning critical lifesaving skills that could protect them from drowning as teenagers and adults.

During the pandemic, many children missed or never started lessons. And the research found 10 per cent of students aged five to 14 have never had a single lesson at school or privately. Children from low socio-economic and regional backgrounds are most impacted.

Swimming has always been in our blood, yet drownings jumped 14 per cent last summer to 104 deaths. We gave our name to the Australian crawl swimming stroke, but incongruously we have forgotten the need to be waterproof.

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