INTRODUCTION: St. Mary s CE Primary School is at the heart of a deprived area of Devon. Due to transport and financial barriers, many of the children attending the school only have the opportunity to swim when they are at school. In addition to this, many of the children rarely get to swim with their parents as they are unable to swim themselves. This is alarming given the proximity of the sea, and the high popularity of local surf clubs. The primary school had 35 children ready to move on from Key Stage 2 who were unable to swim prior to the project. The project there set out to: offer intensive top-up lessons to these children (10 weeks to get them to key stage 2 standard and able to swim 25m) offer evening tuition to parents who need to improve their skill and confidence when it comes to swimming coordinate a family fun swim and gala with awards at the end of the project OBJECTIVES OF PROJECT: - Offer intensive top-up lessons to 35 children below key stage 2 standard (10 weeks to get over 80% of them to key stage 2 standard and able to swim 25m) - Offer 6x evening tuition to 20 parents (in small groups) who need to improve their skill and confidence when it comes to swimming - Coordinate a family fun swim and gala with awards at the end of the project - Offer family swim prizes - Collect M&E information from parents (pre and post project to measure changes in child and parent participation and ability). This will also be followed up by a telephone questionnaire 3 months after the project. - Increase swim activity amongst 50% of attendees 3 months after the project - Identify points of best practice from the project to see what would work best nationally - Identify weaknesses of the project to eradicate for the future - Check for sustainability opportunities
PROJECT DELIVERY: Offered 2 blocks of 5x30min lessons (one per week directly after school). Children that attended were year 6, and for various reasons, had not achieved the key stage 2 attainment standard during the school lessons they received in years 3 and 4. Very few of these children received swimming lesson / support outside of school hours. Nearby is a surf club that provides an after school club with transport to the sea. Children cannot join this highly popular club until they are able to swim 50m (www.northdevonsurfschool.co.uk). Travel provided to the swimming pool from the school. 30min lesson (or 20min once the children are changed and into the water) receive instruction from a teacher. METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION: Interview with school teacher Interview with funding application lead & school governor Interview with swimming teacher (did not go ahead due to the late arrival of the school governor mentioned above) Evaluation of 2 child questionnaires (35 child & 20 adult questionnaires were sent to the school) Intended correlation with the project s own questionnaire this was never provided to the ASA informatics team Intended analysis of registers and progress reports of children and adults this was never provided to the ASA informatics team Observation of the sessions FINDINGS: Positive findings: Travel provided from school. The pool is also a bit far away from the town centre, so the offer of travel is quite useful (although parents have to travel to the pool to pick their children up again). They leave just before school finishes. High attendance levels because of this (90%+). 2 teachers on poolside. A few children have signed up for swimming lessons since the top up scheme. School facilitates this sign up process. Attractive exit route in the form of the surf club that links strongly with the school. Money is the biggest barrier locally which is overcome by this project. Those children that did attend the sessions all improved their ability. Most were able to swim 25m confidently and 50m with high encouragement.
Negative findings: Not all objectives met Offer intensive top-up lessons to 35 children below key stage 2 standard (10 weeks to get over 80% of them to key stage 2 standard and able to swim 25m) Offer 6x evening tuition to 20 parents (in small groups) who need to improve their skill and confidence when it comes to swimming Coordinate a family fun swim and gala with awards at the end of the project Offer family swim prizes Collect M&E information from parents (pre and post project to measure changes in child and parent participation and ability). This will also be followed up by a telephone questionnaire 3 months after the project. Increase swim activity amongst 50% of attendees 3 months after the project Approx 20 children attended. Only 2 children declined the sessions (and parents didn t push for attendance). This suggests that only 22 children were legible for the project. Not 35. 3 adults signed up for the sessions (2x dads, 1x granddad no females and none of these adults were parents of the children attending the top up sessions) Was not completed The organisers hope to put on a gala in the new year (the project has over run due to problems with recruitment Was not completed Was not completed (despite resources given by the informatics team only 2 questionnaires out of 23 were returned) Unknown due to the above Sessions offered were not long enough less than 2.5hrs tuition. Although 2 teachers on poolside - a lot of children still looked bored waiting for their chance to swim. It was fortunate that the group were very well behaved otherwise there was the potential for them to mess about in the water. Adult lessons are organised by the swimming pool rather than the school. The school just promotes the lessons but leaves the pool to make it happen. This gap in communication was a potential cause for the lack of adult uptake in FREE lessons. The project lead is a governor, not a swimming teacher, so she feels that she doesn't have the authority to boss the leisure centre manager around. School doesn't provide badges they hope that they parents do. Those kids that did swim 25m had very poor technique (doggy paddle) but still awarded a pass (confidence perhaps trumped over technique here, which given the aims of the project, may be a good thing but not if the parent now assumes that the child is a confident and competent swimmer and signs them up to the open water surf club!).
SUGGESTIONS: Need closer communication between school and leisure provider. A joint venture should have commitment and communication processes clear for each party. The scheme organisers were surprised by the reluctance of adults to sign up to the free lessons - perhaps future schemes should be accompanied with persona advice of stigma swim, too shy to swim and waders so there is more appreciation for thought processes (motivations and barriers). See below Build in questionnaire completion into the sessions to ensure that M&E takes place. Do not rely on parents to complete them in their own time Maintain the offer of transport directly after school to remove travel, time and cost barriers. However, this is dependent upon funding for future funding for sustainability. Perhaps a joint venture in the future could see the project join up with the local surf club. Inviting the parents to the celebration festival so they can see the children s achievements would inspire them to swim with their children as well as make them proud to see their child s achievements.