Flemish primary schools are increasingly cutting back on school swimming. A new survey of over 500 schools has revealed that 28% of them organised fewer swimming lessons in the past year than previously.
The survey shows that over a quarter (28%) of Flemish schools have cut swimming lessons in the 2022-2023 school year. According to Tine Sleurs, who trains future physical education teachers at UCLL, schools face many difficulties in organising swimming lessons.
"Schools give two reasons for cutting school swimming," Tine Sleurs, who trains future physical education teachers at UCLL, told VRT. "On the one hand, they struggle with the increased cost of school swimming. On the other hand, it is also increasingly difficult to fill the lesson time of swimming lessons efficiently."
Cutting costs
Some municipalities closed their swimming pools in recent years, resulting in schools having to move further and provide bus transport to cover that distance. "And that, of course, costs money."
That extra cost of bus transport puts pressure on the school's budget: 28% of the schools surveyed said they had a higher bill for organising swimming lessons last year – due to more expensive entrance tickets, more expensive bus transport or a combination of the two.
Additionally, with the longer bus ride, schools are also losing precious swimming time. "Some schools now ask students to come to school earlier on swimming lesson days. That way, they can leave earlier and still spend 60 minutes in the water."
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But some schools also choose to swim with larger groups in order to use bus transport as efficiently as possible. "But that then has an effect on teaching efficiency, because the groups get bigger, which means less diversification."
Sleurs calls this a major concern for physical education teachers. "They have to work with large groups and there are too few teachers to teach in level groups."
However, this makes the skill differences between children who take private swimming lessons and those who never swim very obvious. "Will every child still have the chance to learn to swim if school swimming is in danger of coming under further pressure?"
