Lambeth’s Better School Swimming Programmes will deliver a wide variety of Water Safety activities with pupils from over 30 schools doing water safety drills as well as learning basic lifesaving strategies and how to implement them in real life in our Leisure Centres all over the borough.
Drowning Prevention Week
What we’re doing in Lambeth is linked to the annual national Drowning Prevention Week run by the RLSS (Royal Life Saving Society) Monday 17 to Sunday 23 June 2019. Drowning is a leading cause of child accidental death in the UK – the odds of someone dying from drowning is higher than being hit by a car. The RLSS believe that 56% of drownings are people getting into the water by accident..
Summer danger
With warmer weather over summer, the number of people in and near water increases – and unfortunately, this means an increase in the number of drownings and near-drownings. The aim of Drowning Prevention Week is to increase awareness, knowledge, and understanding of water safety to enable pupils to stay safe in and around water.
Swimming skills
Lambeth’s Better School Swimming Programmes aims to ensure all children achieve all three KS2 School Swimming outcomes:
- Swim competently confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25m
- Use a range of strokes effectively (for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke)
- Perform safe self-rescue in different water based situations
However, the Swim Group found that around a third of Year 6 pupils are still unable to swim and perform basic water safety skills. They also found that around two-thirds of parents of Year 6 children fear that their child could not save themselves in water.
The week’s lessons
Better School Swimming lessons
- teach essential water safety skills
- make pupils aware of the dangers of water
- show what to do if they or others get into difficultly
in a fun and proactive environment ready for the summer holidays,
For more information
See the drowning prevention week information pages
- For times and plaves for swimming lessons for all ages in Lambeth see the GLL Leisure centres information pages
