Public education sinking

IT IS a shocking indictment of the state of physical education in an island nation like Britain that almost half of primary school leavers (11-year-olds) cannot swim, according to Department For Education figures.

This is despite swimming being a supposedly ‘compulsory’ part of the National Curriculum.

This shocking statistic is definitely linked to decades of public spending cuts, with public pools closing down as cost-cutting measures.

While Merseyside, like the rest of the country, sweltered in a Mediterranean-like summer, there were, and are, no outdoor swimming baths for people to use to cool off.

So, it is little wonder the nation’s children are not learning to swim when there are shrinking public facilities available.

Ironically, the Tory Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, has called upon private schools to help their disadvantaged state school neighbours to help pupils learn to swim.

The shocking disparity between the public and private sectors of education is shown in figures that reveal half of private schools – 304 of 603 schools – have their own pools, while more than two-thirds of state primary schools have to use hardpressed public pools for swimming lessons.

Hinds wants private schools to open up their pools to state schools to reduce the number of non-swimmers leaving state primaries.

When nearly 50% of 11-year-olds cannot swim, that should be a signal for a massive increase in public funding for public baths, both indoor and outdoor, not a request for ‘charity’ from the lavishly endowed private schools of this class-divided country.

After 10 years of swingeing public expenditure cuts, masquerading as so-called austerity, it isn’t only the nation’s children who are faced with the dilemma ‘sink or swim.’

The same emergency situation faces hospitals, schools, councils, social care, and police, all of whom are having to operate on shoestring budgets that are being cut annually.

‘Tax the rich’ should become the country’s leitmotif, in place of ‘austerity’.