Swimming lessons urged to stop deaths

The Labour Party is calling for more swimming education at schools to keep young New Zealanders safe as summer drownings reach a six-year high.

Thirty-one people have died since December 1 in summer drownings deemed preventable. The last time numbers were this high was in 2011, when 35 people died over the same period.

Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said he didn’t want any family to experience the tragedy of their child drowning. To prevent this he wanted to ensure every child has the opportunity to learn to swim at school. Tight budgets meant school pools were closing and some schools couldn’t afford to provide regular swimming lessons, he said.

“Every drowning is a tragedy and anything we can do to prevent this through better swimming lessons for kids has got to be a good thing.

“It’s about living a full life and living the Kiwi dream and making sure our kids are going to be safe and avoid tragedy in the future.

“It shouldn’t matter where in the country you are, if some kids get free swimming lessons, all kids should be getting them.”

Hipkins believed one solution to stopping the number of young Kiwis drowning lay with the Government.

They needed to “front up” with extra funding to maintain school pools and get kids who attended a school without a pool to have more regular swimming lessons, he said.

“Government funding is just not keeping up with the costs of educating kids. As a result schools have to cut costs,” he said.

“Until funding catches up things like swimming lessons continue to be pushed to the side.”

Education Minister Hekia Parata disagreed that schools did not get enough funding to keep up with the costs of educating students.

“Since 2008 student numbers have increased by 3.6 per cent and the cumulative increase in CPI inflation was 13.5 per cent, while the increase for schools’ operations grants over the same period was over 35 per cent.”

She recommended that schools who did not have a pool use their operations grant to take students to a nearby swimming pool.

“Our Government is concerned to ensure that we get the best outcomes for taxpayers and ratepayers by making good use of quality civic amenities such as community swimming pools.”

Water Safety NZ chief executive Jonty Mills believed adequate swimming lessons would prevent drownings in the long term.

Currently only a quarter of schools are getting an acceptable level of water safety education, which he said amounted to eight lessons or more.

“Schools are expected to provide a form of aquatic education. But it’s not specific, it’s not mandatory.

“A lot of people get into trouble in the water and sadly drown. Many of them don’t have those foundational water safety skills.”

Drownings of children under 15 are generally low due to them being well supervised. But when they hit the 15to 18-year-old age bracket it triples, Mills said.

Drownings of youth aged 0 to 18 have accounted for between 10 and 16 deaths each year for the last five years. Last year 11 youth died.

Beyond the 0 to 4 age group, 85 per cent of preventable drownings are males.

Ministry of Education spokeswoman Kim Shannon said about 1300 or 60 per cent of schools had pools. Those that did not have a pool could use another school’s facility or community baths.