Parents are being flooded with stories about swimming lessons. How it should be done, how it shouldn't be done, and what the dangers are. And understandably so, because swimming lessons are the best way to make your child a capable swimmer, which contributes to water safety. Yet the responsibility of parents often seems to dissolve in the sea of information and obligations.
At a national level, there is little to no policy when it comes to swimming lessons, which means the big players want exclusive rights. Not to be able to guarantee water safety, but to steer laws and regulations in their own favour, secure subsidy funding and achieve a monopoly. Politicians look for answers in the thicket of the swimming industry, but sometimes miss the essential insights. When you ask one party to name all of its competitors, they conveniently forget the biggest or most important ones for their own benefit. Nevertheless, there are members of parliament who see straight through this.
On top of that, there are parents who, probably because of all the fuss surrounding swimming lessons, no longer place such a high priority on it. “My child has to go to hockey and tennis, and I need to exercise too. We'll pick up swimming lessons again after the summer,” or “it really is a hassle, going to lessons every week easily costs me an hour, and with this lovely weather I've got better things to do.” Swimming pools and swim schools run hours of lessons day in, day out, with the goal of making children capable swimmers. Many of them have a cancellation and catch-up system, but it's barely used. Are swimming lessons no longer important?
The importance of good swimming skills in children and adults is no guarantee of water safety, as many people think, but it does contribute strongly to it. If a child has earned their swimming certificate and then doesn't swim for a year, their stroke will look a mess. But once that child takes part in a lesson again, they'll be swimming neatly in no time at all.
Conclusion: swimming lessons are a matter for all of us. On one side there are the parents, who are always responsible themselves for ensuring their child becomes a capable swimmer. If that isn't financially possible, there are all sorts of organisations available wherever the municipality allows it. Then there is the swimming industry, with municipal, semi-commercial and commercial lesson providers. Prices mainly come down to whether or not subsidies are received and the lesson system, which determines group size and the intensity of the number of instructors. Finally, there are the politicians, who will have to find their way through responsibility, costs, benefits, safety and much more. There's no single finger to point, but it starts with the parents, who have to take the first step, keep going throughout the lessons, and continue practising after the swimming certificates have been earned. No organisation can be held responsible for that.
Parents, take your responsibility. Swimming lessons aren't a matter of convenience or priority, but of safety and care for your children.
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