Swimming not drowning

Children are losing the ability to swim, partly as a result of the closure of school pools. This week’s news story draws attention to a problem that can’t be dodged any longer. The question is: what will be done about it?

In the past five years about 165 school pools have closed and about 135 are at risk of closing. There are plenty of reasons. Many pools are old and now expensive to maintain; building new pools to higher specifications is also costly.

Schools can use other schools’ pools or community pools, although this means less convenience and also greater cost. Many schools complain, as they have complained for years, that they can’t afford to provide regular swimming lessons.

The previous, National-led government’s education minister, Hekia Parata, last year rejected the complaint, saying school operations grants covered the cost of pool maintenance or the cost of taking students to a nearby pool. But schools complain that there is constantly more demand on their funding than they can meet.

Many parents know this is true of their own local school.

And it is striking that both Labour and New Zealand First politicians while in Opposition have backed the schools over swimming.

Last year, for instance, Chris Hipkins, Labour’s then-education spokesman and now Minister of Education, said the government needed to front up with extra funding to make sure all children got more regular swimming lessons.

And in 2015 Tracey Martin, New Zealand First’s then-education spokeswoman and now the Associate Minister of Education, made the same point. The government needed to allocate specific funding to schools for water safety lessons.

Now these politicians are in a position to put their money where their mouths are. As the politicians noted before they gained power, New Zealand’s drowning rate is notoriously high.

For whatever reason, New Zealand is not giving its children the swimming skills they need.

The state has a duty to ensure that children can swim; that is why the school curriculum ‘‘expects’’ all children will learn basic swimming schools by the time they are 11.

What is needed is action by the government, ensuring that schools have the resources to meet the requirements of the curriculum in this area.

It is pointless and absurd for the state to lay down expectations and then sit by while children fail to get the skills they need and some die as a result.

At present it’s not clear what the Labour-led Government intends to do in this area. Labour promised during the 2017 election campaign to spend an extra $6 billion over four years to modernise education.

It also promised to offer an extra $150 per student to state schools that don’t ask parents for school donations.

It’s not clear whether these general promises will cover the extra funding needed for school swimming lessons. The Government must make sure that it does. Too many children have drowned.

Action is needed to make sure all children learn to swim.