All primary school students in the state of Victoria should be able to swim 50 metres by the end of primary school under a new state benchmark.
A Herald Sun report has revealed that this new water safety benchmark will become part of the school curriculum from next year.
Education and Emergency Services Minister James Merlino told Herald Sun that teaching kids to swim would “help save lives”.
“That’s why students will learn about water safety, how to float and swim as part of their physical education classes under the new Victorian curriculum from term one next year,” Mr Merlino said.
Recently, a new research carried out by Poolwerx revealed that alarmingly, over half of parents of pre-schoolers were not confident that their child had necessary water skills to get themselves out of trouble if they fell into a backyard pool.
The research also revealed a misconception that 81 percent of parents think that swimming lessons are compulsory in schools, however the reality is that the education system doesn’t necessarily provide any swimming or water safety lessons at all.
Also a third (35%) of parents do not take their child to swimming lessons, citing ‘lack of money’ and ‘no time’ as major contributing factors.
With 26 children aged under five losing their lives to preventable drownings between 2014-2015 and three out of five primary school students who cant swim, under this new curriculum children will now have to achieve the Victorian Water Safety Certificate — which will test their water safety knowledge, rescue skills and ability to survive.
It is up to individual schools to decide how students are taught how to swim, and some financial grants will be available to fund lessons for kids.
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