§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dowd.]
1.46 am§ Valerie Davey (Bristol, West)Despite the hour, I am pleased to have the opportunity to continue the debate about the state of swimming education in primary schools and particularly to follow the previous debate on the order which has established further funding for the new opportunities fund, especially the£750 million for school and community sport from which I trust that school swimming will benefit, as it should.
During my previous Adjournment debate on this subject in June 1999, also in the early hours, I concluded on the basis of information from more than two thirds of local education authorities in England that the resourcing of primary school swimming in terms of time, funding, professional staff and facilities was a matter of serious concern. I also reported, from the same source of evidence, that the percentage of children in school able to swim 25 m varied from 99 per cent. to as low as 28 per cent.
The then Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), stated the Government's belief in the importance of swimming, both for its intrinsic value as a sport and as an essential safety tool that all young people should have. He informed the House that Ofsted was considering a specific survey of swimming in schools which, he hoped, would help to develop a clearer picture of school swimming provision and help the Government to decide what policy steps to take.
The Ofsted report "Swimming in Key Stage 2", subtitled "An Inspection Report on Standards and Provision", was finally published last month and is available on the Ofsted website. Some 301 schools were inspected in November 1999. I am unclear as to the extent of swimming lessons inspected, as the report says that, where provision took place before the inspection or was planned for, inspectors' judgments were on the basis of evidence from discussions with head teachers and scrutiny of their records. The report also noted that, where a school did not make provision for swimming, this was clearly stated on the inspection record. How many of the 301 schools did not make provision, and why not? How were the children at those schools accounted for in the subsequent statistics on attainment?
Before turning to the main findings of the report, I want to register my disappointment that only 301 schools were inspected, and apparently no overall survey was made via the local education authorities. By comparison, the joint report into swimming in July this year by the Central Council of Physical Recreation and The Times Educational Supplement contacted 769 schools and found that one in 20 primary schools does not include swimming in the curriculum.
The Government are to be commended on retaining swimming as a compulsory element of the primary curriculum even when—between September 1998 and September 2000—some relaxation was allowed so as to give priority to the literacy and numeracy strategies. The swimming curriculum includes not only teaching children, by the age of 11, to swim unaided, competently and safely 179 for at least 25 m, but helping them to develop confidence in the water and showing them how to rest, float and adopt support positions. Children must learn a variety of means of propulsion—using either arms or legs or both—and to develop effective and efficient swimming strokes on the front and the back, and—importantly—the principles and skills of water safety and survival.
Those are the requirements, but what is the picture of provision and attainment that emerges from the two recent reports? Both show a sharp decline in the time allocated to swimming. Ofsted states that 50 per cent. of schools report a decline in that time over the past three years—sometimes by as much as half. Three reasons are given. The first is the closure of local pools—especially learning pools—and their replacement by leisure pools that are often not conducive to the formal teaching of swimming. Secondly, there is the impact of the literacy and numeracy strategy and the resulting pressure on the remainder of the curriculum. Thirdly, increased costs are involved—especially for transport. The CCPR-TES report found that more than two in five schools ask for a parental contribution, which can be as much as £3.60 a week.
That confirms the statement made in July by David Hart of the National Association of Head Teachers. He said:
We are seeing a deplorable decline in school sport and swimming in particular, largely as a result of the enormous pressure on the core subjects and the pressure on school budgets … children are missing out on swimming which everyone regards as a crucial skill.The Ofsted report also documents the worrying diversity in swimming attainment between schools, contrasting especially those in rural areas, where 91 per cent. of children reach the required standard, with those in inner cities, where the figure is 77 per cent. Ofsted found that nearly one in five children, or 17 per cent., could not swim 25 m unaided at key stage 2. That hides the more serious situation for schools in the free school meal band 5, where one in three, or 33 per cent., do not reach that level.
It is clear that provision of an appropriate swimming programme has not been an entitlement for all; those in the lower social and economic groups are more likely to receive an inadequate schedule. As the Amateur Swimming Association notes, there is a danger that the opportunity to learn to swim will become a privilege for those in higher income groups, while others will be put further at risk as a result of not having the opportunity to develop this essential life skill. That must be of concern to the Government who are so committed to tackling social exclusion.
A further concern, which I share with Ofsted, is that almost half of all schools make no special provision for children who do not develop sufficient competence in swimming, or who are unlikely to be able to swim, by the end of key stage 2. Ofsted also points to a minority of schools that do not cover the element of the curriculum relating to water safety and survival. Ofsted notes that this is "a worrying omission". It is worrying—especially because the 1999 report of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents showed a 50 per cent. increase in drowning in the under-15 age group; 54 drowned in 1999, compared to 36 in 1998. RoSPA stresses that deaths occur especially among those able to swim, but unable to recognise danger. To make an analogy with cycling, 180 learning to cycle for 25,50 or even 100 m is not sufficient to allow a person to venture alone on to the quietest road. Thanks to the Ofsted and CCPR-TES reports, we now have a clearer, albeit still incomplete, picture of swimming in primary schools.
For the future, however, monitoring needs to be improved. Swimming is part of the national curriculum, and it is not enough to rely on ad hoc reports. Within the regular inspection of primary schools, swimming provision should be documented. With this information, evidence-based comment on swimming standards can then be made by Her Majesty's chief inspector in the annual report.
Monitoring, however accurate, does not in itself improve anything. The Government must now decide what action to take. The priorities remain the same: the availability of time, funding, trained staff and facilities to ensure that all children have the opportunity to learn to swim.
The Ofsted report shows a clear correlation between the time allocated to swimming in the curriculum and the standards achieved by pupils. At present, there are no guidelines on how much time should be spent in the pool at key stages 1 and 2, and I recommend that some guidelines should be drawn up, requiring, as recommended by the Amateur Swimming Association, that at least two terms at key stage 1 or 2 should include swimming tuition.
Resources should be earmarked to provide lessons, and more intensive courses, outside school hours or during school holidays for children who are unable to swim to the required standard. As swimming is not a requirement within the secondary school curriculum, there is no obligation to follow up non-swimmers.
I pay tribute to the qualified teachers and instructors at primary and secondary school level, at swimming clubs such as AquaPlan in Bristol and in voluntary youth groups, for it is their skill and commitment that give many children a level of proficiency which, as is not the case in many other sports, they can enjoy and benefit from for the rest of their lives, into old age.
I thank BT again for the£0.5 million that it has contributed towards training primary school teachers. I trust that, given its proven value, that training programme will be supported with further Government funding. I also urge that swimming training be reintroduced into initial teacher training courses, to include the effective teaching of water safety as well as the teaching and development of swimming itself.
Within schools, funding has to be improved and ring-fenced, so that a parental contribution is not necessary. With an ever-increasing proportion of funding delegated to schools, the disparity in the cost of swimming needs to be reflected. For example, of the 90 schools using local authority pools in Bristol, in 19 cases the children can walk to the pool, and in the rest transport is needed, but with differing journey lengths.
Mention of pools brings me to the most urgent and costly of the requirements to improve swimming standards at every level. The Sydney Olympic games highlighted the fact that there has been chronic underfunding in swimming infrastructure over many years. It was revealed that there are only 19 Olympic-size pools in Britain. The Australian state of Queensland alone has more such pools than the whole of the United 181 Kingdom—and for the first time since 1936 our Olympic swimmers came home with no medals. Investment in swimming is a long-term requirement and necessity.
The situation in Bristol is probably reflected in other cities. Of the eight main local authority pools, one was built in the early 1920s, four in the 1930s, two in the 1960s, and the most recent in 1974. The city council is beginning to address that issue, and last September it set up a citizens jury. The jury did not make detailed recommendations, but it produced a useful list of principles for improving swimming facilities. In summary, members stated that future provision had to attract new swimmers, ensure access and inclusiveness in the widest sense—that includes meeting the needs of disabled swimmers—guarantee future viability, and invest in young people.
Bristol councillors are now drawing up proposals to link swimming pools to other sporting and leisure facilities, and to bring into the equation both school requirements and what provision schools may already have. A citywide swimming strategy involving leisure and education departments is both exciting and daunting, with the inevitable questions to be answered about cost and time scale.
Today, Sport England informed me of the work that it is doing to upgrade and develop new pools. It gave me a list of 11 such school pools. Interestingly, those receiving the greatest sums were dual use, and I welcome that, but there were only 11 pools on that list. My spirits genuinely lifted when, last month, Minister for Sport announced the creation of the School Sports Alliance to oversee the£750 million lottery fund allocated for school sport and community sport, together with further Government funding promised for future years.
The Minister replying to this debate welcomed that announcement and her Department's involvement, working closely with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. I hope that she will be able to assure the House that the needs of school swimming, as highlighted in recent reports, are on the agenda for action by the Department for Education and Employment and the School Sports Alliance.
§ 2.1 am
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Jacqui Smith)I am pleased to welcome the debate instigated by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey). As she said, she has raised this issue before. She is a well-informed, doughty campaigner for swimming in our schools. I wish only that she could initiate such debates earlier in the day, as this debate is even later than the one she managed to initiate with my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office.
I reiterate the importance of swimming. It is not only important educationally; it promotes healthy life styles and exercise that, as my hon. Friend says, can be continued as an adult. As she strongly emphasised, it is crucial for personal safety. I hope that there can be no question about the Government's commitment to promoting swimming in the primary school curriculum. It has always been a compulsory element of the PE national curriculum. As she reminded us, it remained so even when programmes of study for the non-core subjects were 182 temporarily suspended to allow the national literacy and numeracy strategies to be established between September 1998 and July 2000.
Swimming and water safety are an important and compulsory part of the revised national curriculum for physical education introduced in our schools in September 2000. My hon. Friend detailed what children should have covered by the age of 11. It was important that the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and my Department took note of the concerns of the subject communities about swimming during the review of the national curriculum. As a result the programme for swimming was renamed "swimming activities and water safety" to emphasise its vital contribution to safety and a non-statutory programme was included in key stage 1, in addition to the revised statutory programme in key stage 2. It is also important that good practice in delivering swimming is shared and that teachers are supported. Detailed schemes of work for teachers, including swimming, have been produced to ensure consistency of teaching and to support the new national curriculum.
My hon. Friend mentioned the £750 million announced by the Prime Minister to support sport in schools. That, of course, follows the important planning work that has been done by my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and me in the Department for Education and Employment to produce the Government's sports strategy and the implementation work now progressing with the assistance of many partners, including representatives from the ASA, and being put into operation under the auspices of the School Sports Alliance.
§ Mr. Bob Russell (Colchester)The Minister has given a very encouraging report, but when will all children receive the minimum two hours' a week physical education, not just swimming, which is part of the Government's aims and objectives? She will agree that 25 per cent. currently do it, but 75 per cent. do not.
§ Jacqui SmithI hope that the hon. Gentleman realises that I shall come to that point in a minute.
I will refer to aspects of the subject that particularly relate to school swimming later, but my hon. Friend raised the issue of the need for suitable facilities. Following the publication of the strategy, we are commissioning consultants to provide a full audit of local education authority sports facilities, including swimming facilities. Sport England and the Local Government Association have been asked to carry out a nationwide audit of sports facilities in England.
The Government are committed to raising standards in all areas of the physical education curriculum. As an extremely important component of the national curriculum, improvements in swimming facilities will be considered where shortfalls in provision are identified nationally or by local education authorities. I want to take this opportunity to commend the examples that my hon. Friend outlined of the imaginative use and development by local authorities of their swimming facilities.
We are seeking constantly to improve and build up the evidence base about what is effective in schools and about areas that require closer attention. To that end, and in an attempt to understand the issues affecting the teaching and 183 learning of swimming, we commissioned Ofsted to produce a report on swimming at key stage 2. It was published in November.
Ofsted's remit, in addition to its normal inspection requirements, was to evaluate and report on the standards of swimming achieved by pupils by the end of key stage 2; the quality and effectiveness of the teaching or instruction through the observation of swimming lessons, and any related activity, such as classroom-based work; the steps taken by schools to give particular support to non-swimmers or poor swimmers; and the curriculum and assessment arrangements made in respect of swimming, in particular, within the PE curriculum and, in general, as part of the whole school curriculum, making reference to the quality of planning, time allocation and organisational requirements.
My hon. Friend compared the Ofsted report unfavourably with the survey carried out by the Central Council of Physical Recreation and The Times Educational Supplement. It is, in our view, effective to use a section 10 inspection to focus in more detail on a specific aspect, as happened in that case. The inspections were comprehensive, involving observation and evaluation. That, of course, takes longer to conduct and evaluate than a survey such as that carried out by The Times Educational Supplement and the CCPR.
Although all information is helpful, the Ofsted report gives us some important qualitative information. My Department has welcomed the generally positive report, which showed that, in the schools inspected, four out of five children were able to swim 25 m at the end of key stage 2. It also showed that pupil attainment was satisfactory or better in most lessons; that progress was satisfactory or better in the majority of lessons; and that pupils made good progress in three quarters of lessons.
The report also showed that the teaching of swimming was found to be good or better in four out of five lessons. I agree with my hon. Friend that teaching is crucial to developing good swimming education. Nearly half the swimming lessons were taught by swimming instructors, the large majority of whom are experienced and hold nationally recognised qualifications, such as the ASA lifeguard qualification. A similar proportion of lessons were taught by teachers from the school, usually a member of staff with a qualification in the performance or teaching of swimming such as an ASA teacher's certificate. A small number of lessons were taught by adults other than teachers who have a personal interest in swimming and usually hold a water safety qualification.
It is vital that we improve the support and quality of teaching in swimming and in PE in general. Teachers in primary schools are not usually PE specialists. We recognise the need for support there, and that is why the school sports co-ordinators programme, which will have 6,000 primary schools involved in three years' time, will provide an important opportunity for training and sharing the resources of secondary schools, including sports colleges.
We recognise that PE is a very demanding, multi-disciplinary subject. We are working with the Teacher Training Agency and subject associations to develop support materials and summer schools to help with that. The way in which teachers are training is 184 changing rapidly, and it is important that PE and swimming keep up with innovations. We are committed to ensuring that that happens.
My hon. Friend highlighted the important issue of time. The Ofsted report judged that 85.5 per cent. of schools had satisfactory or better time allocation for swimming. We know that schools have concentrated hard on introducing the literacy and numeracy strategies, and we make no apologies for emphasising those crucial skills. I do not believe that there is a conflict in aiming for high standards of reading, writing and maths and for good swimming and PE provision. However, we have asked the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to provide good practice to schools about how to achieve the Secretary of State's aspiration that children should have access to two hours a week of physical activity inside and outside the curriculum.
Although most swimming takes place in year 5, an increasing number of schools are introducing swimming in years 3 and 4. Schools that target the younger pupils enable those pupils who cannot swim 25 m at the end of year 4 to continue to go swimming when they are in year 5 and year 6 until they achieve that standard. That is an example of good practice that, along with the opportunities offered by the non-statutory framework at key stage 1, points to the importance of starting early, not least because support can then be targeted at those who have not achieved the required standards.
The report found that 60 per cent. of schools funded swimming from their own budget; some schools were funded directly by the local education authority, and some LEAs targeted funding through "learn to swim" grants. LEAs tended to devolve the budget for swimming, and schools used that to buy back transport facilities to take children to swimming pools. I share my hon. Friend's concern that we ensure that good practice in funding for swimming is disseminated widely among schools and LEAs.
The report shows that there is some very good teaching in swimming lessons, that the overwhelming majority of pupils look forward to their lessons and that almost all pupils were enthusiastic and well motivated. However, my hon. Friend is right to highlight concerns that must be addressed.
Some aspects of the report concerned us. A large majority of schools made adequate curricular provision for swimming, but a small minority did not cover the full programme of study, in particular the area of water safety. Half the schools in the report did not make special provision for pupils who do not develop a sufficient competence in swimming and are unlikely to swim by key stage 2. My hon. Friend rightly highlighted the significant variation depending on schools' location and free school meals banding. That must be a cause of concern.
Other concerns raised by the report are that half of schools have no specific policy or provision for pupils who are non-swimmers or reluctant swimmers, and more than half of schools have reduced the time allocated to swimming.
I hope that schools will take note of the findings of the Ofsted report and will include within their development plans action to address the concerns raised. There are some very positive findings in the report, but we have to address the small number of very serious concerns. We will meet Ofsted to analyse the findings in more detail. 185 My hon. Friend is right to say that we need to be clear about the messages in the report. It is not clear, for example, how many of those pupils who do not meet the target of 25 m are non-swimmers, and we plan a meeting for early in the new year to consider that detail.
We are also establishing a small action group, which may comprise representatives from Ofsted, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the QCA and swimming associations. It will be charged with urgently producing a list of immediate and robust actions to address concerns.
The group will review the findings of the Ofsted report on swimming and any other recent research, and identify the key issues that need to be addressed to improve the provision of swimming in the curriculum. The group will 186 also make immediate recommendations to improve the standards and quality of swimming and especially to ensure that pupils reach the 25 m target by the end of key stage 2. I shall meet the Amateur Swimming Association in January, and I hope to meet other relevant organisations to discuss an action plan to provide more opportunities for swimming.
In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. I hope that she is convinced that the Government believe in the importance of swimming and that we shall act to ensure that all children have that entitlement.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at fifteen minutes past Two o'clock.