Swimming at Highfield Community Primary School

Our children are given the opportunity to access swimming lessons during their time in upper key stage 2, they have one 45 minute lesson per week at Blaydon Swimming Pool. Our school lessons reward important values and behaviours as children progress. As they move along the pathway based on the ASA's official 'Learn to Swim Framework', the children receive certificates based on a range of important qualities such as showing kindness, respect, courage and determination. During these lessons they receive specialist teaching from the staff at the pool and are taught to:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• use a range of strokes effectively [for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke]
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situation

At the end of the academic year 2020/2021 we can report that 67% of our pupils reached the standard required to be able to swim 25 metres.

Any children who do not reach the expected standard are offered top up sessions at Blaydon Swimming Pool. These are sessions that parents are given the opportunity to take their children along to in order to boost their skills.