A new report just released to Campbell Live has shown that New Zealand children are worse swimmers now than they were in 2001.
Swimming in New Zealand is not just treading water, it’s going backwards.
The report says one in two kids cannot swim 25m and only a third can swim 50m.
Only one in five can swim 200m, the benchmark distance considered necessary to swim and survive in the water.
Perhaps most worryingly a quarter of children cannot get across 25m or tread water.
Water Safety NZ manager Matt Claridge says this will result in more deaths in an island nation which already has a per capita drowning rate twice that of Australia’s.
“We’re estimating that drownings are going to be up around in excess of 150 deaths per year from the year 2025. That’s really considerable given the fact that the primary school kids of today and the 1990s are not being exposed to Learn to Swim education.”
Claridge says the decline in children’s swimming ability is due to a number of factors including a lack of funding for schools.
“Schools don’t get enough funding support to adequately deliver Learn to Swim. Whether that’s maintaining a facility on their own premises or taking kids to a public pool. It’s generally too difficult,” he says.
So is learning to swim becoming a privilege of the elite?
Pupils at ACG Parnell Primary School, a private school have regular half-hour swimming lessons at the nearby Olympic-sized pool.
“They are able to swim all the four strokes, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle,” says Hilton Brown swimming instructor Zsuzsanna Bertesy.
“How many of these kids can swim 25m. We had a class of 18, and all of them can swim 25m, all of them.”
It is a different story at St Joseph’s School in Onehunga.
Year 5 pupils at this school will have no swimming lessons this year due to a lack of funds to go to a private pool.
Instead the children have to go to a beach to learn about rips and waves.
Assistant Principal Michael Piper says his pupils are not the best swimmers.
“If you asked them to swim 25m, out of that of 46, I reckon you’ve probably got three or four who could do that.”
Mr Piper says the timetable and a lack of money means this is an unfortunate reality.
Mr Claridge says all pupils should receive 10 Learn to Swim lessons each year over a two-week period.
“We want the Ministry of Education to mandate that learning to swim in schools is compulsory,” he says.
The Education Minister Anne Tolley declined to appear on Campbell Live but her department did release a statement saying pupils should be able to swim three strokes by the time they leave primary school, and helping kids understand water safety is something schools, parents and the community must do together.