Swimming at UTS
Almost all of the children at Ursula Taylor can swim 25m by the end of Year 6. This is due to a combination of reasons.
- A large proportion of children have swimming lessons outside of school.
- Our children swim twice a week during the second half of the summer term right from being in reception year.
- We have a rive in our village and parents and families are aware of the dangers that this potentially creates.
Children that find swimming challenging have sessions to gain water confidence and rapidly gain the skills to swim.
Our Swimming Pool
We are very fortunate to have a swimming pool on site at Ursula Taylor, all of our children from Foundation Stage to Year 6 are provided with 2 sessions of swimming a week during the second half of the Summer Term in our school pool.
Our pool is a shallow pool which is ideal for children who are developing their water confidence and beginning to learn to swim. We are able to adapt our lessons for older children and those who are more confident swimmers to develop their style and strength to swim longer distances.
All our Teachers are swim qualified and also complete annual Resuscitation training, our pool and swimming procedures are fully risk assessed and health and safety is managed very carefully to ensure all of our children and staff are safeguarded to the highest standard.
The National Curriculum (2014) for Physical Education states:
'All schools must provide swimming instruction either in Key Stage 1 or Key Stage 2. In particular children should be taught to:
a) Swim competently and proficiently over as distance of at least 25m
b) Use a range of strokes effectively
c) Perform self-rescue in different water based situations
Please note: Children will not be able to swim if they are wearing earrings. They must be removed prior to swimming (Before school by the parent or during school by the child - staff are not advised to remove earrings). This is to ensure the safety of all children in the pool and also to protect the fragile pool lining and prevent the blocking of the filters.
Additional information about our Swimming Curriculum can be found on our Curriculum website pages.
We are very aware that our swimming pool is a very costly resource to maintain and run but also that with a river in our village, it is important that children are taught the essential life skill of swimming and ensuring their own water safety.
In order to maintain the swimming pool, we are fortunate to receive an annual donation from our PTFA and also that many parents choose to donate towards the upkeep of our pool. We also use our Sports Premium Funding to support the upkeep and resourcing of the pool, renewing equipment and staff training on an annual basis.