Swimming Assessment

Understanding Swimming Assessment

What is Swimming Assessment? Swimming assessment in primary schools is designed to evaluate pupils' swimming abilities and ensure they meet the national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety. These assessments help schools identify pupils' strengths and areas for improvement, ensuring all children develop essential swimming skills.

National Curriculum Requirements: By the end of Key Stage 2 (Year 6), every child should be able to:

1. Swim competently, confidently, and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres.
   • This means swimming 25 metres without stopping, using a recognisable stroke, and without the use of swimming aids.
2. Use a range of strokes effectively.
   • Pupils should be able to use different strokes, such as front crawl, backstroke, and breaststroke, and adapt them for various purposes.
3. Perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.
   • Pupils should know how to stay safe in and around water, understand water safety rules, and be able to perform self-rescue techniques if they find themselves in difficulty.

How is Swimming Assessed? Swimming assessments typically involve:

• Initial Assessment: At the start of the swimming program, pupils' basic swimming skills and confidence in the water are assessed. This helps group pupils according to their ability.
• Ongoing Assessment: Throughout the swimming program, pupils are regularly assessed on their progress in swimming distances, stroke techniques, and water safety skills.
• Final Assessment: At the end of the program, a final assessment is conducted to ensure pupils meet the national curriculum requirements.

Why is Swimming Assessment Important? Swimming assessment ensures that all pupils leave primary school with the necessary swimming and water safety skills. These skills are not only important for physical health and fitness but also for safety, as they can help prevent drowning and other water-related accidents.

Additional Resources: For more information on swimming and water safety, you can refer to the Swim England Guide for Primary Schools and the Swim England School Swimming Assessment Videos.

Swimming Assessment for the past 3 academic years (2020-21, 2021-22 & 2022-23)

In the 2020-21 academic year, the Co-vid pandemic and its changing guidelines and requirements meant that we were unable to deliver school swimming lessons for any of our children during the academic year, despite arranging several times to do so.

In the 2021-22 academic year, we delivered swimming lessons for Y3-6 children. We scheduled to deliver swimming lessons for Y2 children, but cancellations to swimming lessons at the beginning of the academic year meant that Y2 could no longer attend. We did deliver extra swimming lessons for those Y6 children not meeting the expected guidelines set by the government. The table below shows the achievements of our children before and after the extra swimming lessons:

In the 2022-23 academic year, we delivered swimming lessons for Y4-Y6 children, meaning all children received at least 6 weeks of lessons. However, due to the success in previous years of our ‘Y6 Booster Sessions’, below age related expectation children from Y4-6 received a further 6 weeks of lessons. This model did mean that Y3 children did not get the opportunity to swim, but the long term impact of this decision will be that children could receive a maximum of 36 weeks of swimming lessons instead of 24 weeks, thus giving them more opportunity to meet the end of KS2 expectations for swimming. The table below shows the achievements of our Y6 children before and after the extra swimming lessons: