Swim Active Project: Denbigh Holiday Swim School The Informatics Team Dec 2012

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Lucy Cox
5 years ago
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1 INTRODUCTION: Denbigh High in Luton, is located in a multi cultural community with a high percentage of pupils from a Muslim background. Denbigh High became a Sport Specialist in 2007 and has since converted to an Academy. The Swimming Pool at the is run by Denbigh PE Department who hire the pool out after school (5-9pm) each evening. The Swimming Pool is a 1930 s lido which allows the viewing area to be screened off by a curtain, which can be utilised to overcome the cultural barriers to participation for this community. There has been a recent demand from the community for the High to support and decrease the percentage of non swimmers within the surrounding areas due to the closure of the local swimming pool. The number of enquires about the use of the school swimming pools has increased, however due to their own P.E. curriculum which utilises the pool, they don t have enough time to offer beyond the current primary school attendance. The project was aimed at providing primary school children within the local community an opportunity to attend local swimming holiday camps (October Half Term) to help improve local children s swimming abilities and confidence, whilst using a familiar school pool. OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT: When Denbigh High applied for their Swim Active Project they put together a funding bid around some key objectives. - To work alongside the local feeder primary schools within the area to support and reduce the number of non swimmers attending the school at the start of Key Stage 3 (i.e. Year 7). - Allow the High to make swimming fun and more accessible to all again. - Provide low teacher to pupils ratios and high quality teaching to ensure the pupils make excellent progress over short periods of time, by supporting and encourage positive learning. - Ability to build children s confidence and build a positive rapport; personal success and swimming development (competence). - Incorporate pupils from, the High to assist with the lessons; providing work experience and volunteering hours.

2 - Achieve a sustainable swimming holiday camp; a chance to build and develop children s swimming confidence and water skills during half terms and summer periods ASA have evaluated the programme to see if the funding has been used successfully to achieve the objectives set out in the funding proposal. This allows us to highlight any weaknesses in the programme and to suggest solutions to eradicate the problems in the future. We have also taken points of best practice from the programme, to evaluate the sustainability of the project. PROJECT DELIVERY: The half term programme was promoted through the feeder primary schools, via the transition manager, distributing posters and flyers. The High also promoted the programme at their open day. The programme extended to was also offered to year 7 pupils (who were invited by their P.E. teachers) to take advantage of these sessions, as they were identified as needing extra swimming tuition. To enrol their children onto the programme the parents had to book their place via the telephone. During the enrolment process the parents had to state whether or not their children were a beginner or improver. The teachers also assessed the children s ability on the first session. Due to the varying abilities of the pupils, the session was split into younger and older children. All participants were aged between 5-13 years old, this age group was chosen due to safe guarding reasons (under 5 s non swimmers). The ASA contacted the coordinator via to organise a visit to the project to observe a session and meet with the staff. Monitoring and evaluation methods also took place, which included feedback from the parents and coordinator via questionnaire responses. Two, 40minute sessions were held at 10am and 11am. The sessions were 40minutes long instead of 30minutes as children need longer to learn a skill, whilst still engaging with them and keeping their attention span. The 10am session was for males, which was split into two. One for the younger non swimmers with a male assistant in the water which a male teacher on poolside, and the older improver swimmers were with a female teacher. The 11am session was for the females, which was also split into two groups; younger non swimmers and older improver swimmers. This session saw the teachers swap around so the female

3 teacher took the younger non swimmers and taught the session in the water, and the male teacher took the older improver swimmers. The swap in teachers was due to cultural reasons, as it was felt that age affected the cultural issues, i.e. certain age when a male can teach a female. Teachers who were employed by the, also swapped around, the boy teacher taught the male younger children / non swimmers alongside a male assistant. During the 11am session for females the non swimmer female teacher got into the water to teach the session due to cultural reasons. The teachers were ASA Level 2 Swimming Teacher qualified and were ex pupils of the school and completed work experience at the swimming pool, so were familiar with the pool. The assistant in the pool was from the school s sport academy, completing work experience. FINDINGS: There has recently been more demand in the area for swimming as the local pool was shut down. This lead to an influx of primary schools inquiring about using the swimming pool, however due to the high school use it regularly for their P.E. curriculum during the day, which limits opening up the swimming pool to the community. The demand for swimming development at the school was evident with a high percentage of children attending the school at the start of Key Stage 3 not able to swim. By focusing on local primary school pupils, and giving them more of an opportunity to swim, it was believed to have a positive impact and benefit children within the community and the local primary partnership schools, by ensuring that when children join in year 7 they will be able to meet the Key Stage 2 school swimming requirements. 22 children originally signed up, however 15 children turned up for the sessions. The project was about focusing on quality not quantity, as in the funding proposal they outlined a max of 14 pupils in the water with 2 teachers. The sessions were priced at 2 per session, which was well received amongst the community as it was much cheaper than a normal lesson. The parents of the participants swam very rarely and occasionally on holiday, this could be due to their own weak swimming ability or due to cultural reasons; I can only go when there is women only sessions with children I don t want people to see me in a swimming costume (parent quotes).

4 Number of Children [Type text] Other parents have never had the opportunity to swim themselves, however Denbigh have been able to sign post the parents to attend adult lessons which are offered to the community. Parents felt the sessions had provided their children with the skills to carry on swimming, and will look to allow their children to continue swimming at Denbigh Holiday Swim during future school holidays. The children who participated in the programme have since become more confident and have been able to swim further. The organiser quoted after the first lesson to see the non swimmers jumping into the middle of the pool with a noodle was incredible, to see their water confidence improve in such a short space of time. Participant Findings How far can you swim? Scared of the Couldn't swim water at all Could swim with floats Ability Could swim 10 metres 25m but I struggled More than 25 metres Before After 43% don t go swimming with their school and 57% do go swimming with their school. The children enjoy swimming more since they attended the swimming sessions at Denbigh and enjoy swimming lessons outside of school more. 29% don t go swimming with friends and family. 71% swim with friends and family. 100% of the participants want to continue swimming lessons at Denbigh, which shows there is a demand for the project to continue.

5 SUGGESTIONS: One of the successes of this project was down to the demand of these lessons at a discounted rate amongst the local community. Moving forwards the parents and children thoroughly enjoyed the week long programme and would like to see the programme continue during school holidays as the children s swimming ability and confidence improved. This was backed up by the High who want to progress the idea further and provide more holiday camps to the local community, as there is a market to keep sustaining the project. One idea is to develop the programme by providing lessons for children under the age of 5. Another idea is to provide adult lessons to the community, as the parents often want to swim too; they have previously never had the chance to learn. The organiser felt there was a future demand for split gender sessions; male and female, and offering female sessions with children would also be well received. One lesson learnt from this project was that smaller projects have a bigger impact. It was identified that there was a need for local provision due to the low socioeconomic status of the community. The focus needs to be on community projects as they usually focus on quality and provision. Filling the gaps with a general national blanket project doesn t work.

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