Learn To Swim With SwimWay – A Necessary Life Skill

Swimming is great fun, an excellent way to stay healthy and relaxing leisure activity. But it is also an important life skill. So what is a life skill and why is it necessary to learn how to swim?

Unicef defines a life skill as: “abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.”

SwimWay Programme

SwimWay teaches children to swim without floats or buoyancy aids. This means that children must develop their own skills. They learn to use their own buoyancy, whilst developing a positive relationship with the water.

Our unique swimming program is progressive. Each skill must be built before a student can move up to the next level. Our private classes enable our instructors to give children one-on-one attention. Thus, they can run the lessons based on the individual student’s needs. This helps to focus on the individual’s skills and weaknesses. All these factors will help develop the student’s abilities in the water. This will enable them to be safer in and around it.

Instructor Training

At the beginning of every term, we run a first aid course.  This covers CPR and other emergency training and operational procedures.  This is far more than is legally required, but you cannot put a price on children’s safety.  We also follow strict safeguarding procedures to ensure we maintain the welfare of our students.

Why Should My Children Learn to Swim?

The World Health Organization says drowning is the 3rd leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide. There are 372,000 estimated drownings annually.

Globally, the highest drowning rates are among children 1-4 years, followed by children 5-9 years.  Many people perceive being inland as an advantage. However, statistics from the national water safety board show the highest number of fatalities in the UK happened inland. 217 (52%) occurred in waters such as rivers, canals, lakes, lochs, reservoirs and ponds.

“Every year in the UK, around 400 people die from drowning as a result of an accident in or around water. There are thousands of individuals who survive drowning events but who are left with severe, and often permanent, life-changing injuries.”

ROSPA. (2015). Water safety and drowning. [Online]. Available at: https://www.rospa.com/Leisure-Safety/Water (Accessed 23 October 2015).

This shows that both parents and children need to be vigilant when around any source of water, and that knowledge and experience in the water are great ways to help prevent tragedy.

It’s never too late to learn. Contact us to learn more about our swimming lessons for parents & babies, children and adults.