Parents issued warning that a million children could leave primary school not knowing how to swim

Parents have been issued a stern warning that over a million primary school children could still be unable to swim. 

The warning comes after a fourteen-year-old girl from Cheshire drowned after she jumped into a pond to rescue her friend.

Nicola Davis says she doesn’t want other families to go through the trauma of losing a child – her daughter Teya drowned after her friend slipped into a pond and she tried to rescue her.

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She told ITV News: “It is hard, I don’t want to see another family go through what we are going through. Personally with my own kids I want them to know how to swim and save a life.”

Normally, the national curriculum requires children to be able to swim twenty-five metres unaided before they leave primary school – but lockdown has meant that over the next five years, more than one million children could leave without being able to achieve that.

Swimming instructors have also reported a sharp drop in access to pools and leisure centres during the pandemic.

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The national body for Swimming, Swim England, seconded this and added that the impact of Covid means more than one million children could leave primary school unable to swim.

The statistics show that more than five million swimming sessions – the vast majority being swimming lessons – were lost following the closure of public pools for the first time on March 20th, 2020.

To try and tackle this issue, Swim England has now joined forces with nine swimming pool operators up and down the country to urge parents and guardians to ensure children return to ‘safe and secure’ swimming lessons as part of its latest #LoveSwimming campaign.

For more information, visit the Swim England website here.