Cuts in school swimming lessons help swell the obesity crisis

 Swimming lesson cutbacks in schools are contributing to the obesity crisis, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) general secretary has suggested.

Kevin Courtney warned that many schools have cut back on PE lessons, and fail to teach children how to cook.

At the NUT’S annual conference in Brighton, he said: “We need to change because our children are amongst the most obese but we don’t teach them to cook. In many schools we’ve stopped teaching them to swim and cut back on other physical activities”.

Mr Courtney said that children are also being denied the opportunity to study arts, dance, drama and design and technology. He said the “exam factories culture” does not promote “analytic thinking, problem-solving and imagination” nor does it help to formulate the “life skills and creativity” that children will need in an “era of automation”.

Mr Courtney used his speech to defend the NUT spending £300,000 during last year’s general election – more than Ukip or the Green Party.