Swimming and Water Safety in Schools
Awards
20/08/2018Our School Swimming and Water Safety Charter Awards have been designed with pupils of all abilities and backgrounds in mind. Using the Awards in your school swimming programme will:
- Ensure all pupils have access to the most essential swimming and water safety skills, whatever their ability.
- Provide reward and recognition to every pupil who participates in school swimming lessons.
- Keep all pupils motivated to continue with their school swimming lessons and meet the national curriculum requirements for swimming and water safety.
Tap or click the headings below to find out more about the Charter Awards and supporting resources.
The are eight core Awards for pupils to achieve. They are:
- School Swimming and Water Safety Awards 1-6.
- Aquatic Skills Award.
- Self Rescue Award.
The Awards are progressive, enabling pupils to gain water confidence, develop aquatic skills and learn essential water safety and self-rescue techniques in line with the national curriculum.
Using our Awards scheme helps pupils meet the requirements of the national curriculum and provides recognition to pupils for achieving their swimming and water safety skills. Everyone likes to know they are being successful!
Certificates for each Award are available to download and print from the online Charter hub, available to schools that sign up to the School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.
Supporting resources
Passports and stickers
To keep pupils excited about learning to swim, the passports (progress cards) and stickers are an individual record of their achievement and encourages them to continue to learn. It could also be used to identify progress in their regular, out of school swimming lessons.
Passports and stickers are part of the physical resource pack that is provided to all schools that sign up to the School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.
Star Achiever pin badge
The Star Achiever pin badge is a special recognition for pupils who complete all eight of the School Swimming and Water Safety core Awards.
Pin badges are part of the physical resource pack that is provided to all schools that sign up to the School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.
The Swim England School Swimming Foundation Awards have been developed for pupils with special educational needs, disabilities or other needs which mean they are unable or are finding it difficult to achieve the full national curriculum requirements.
There are six School Swimming Foundation Awards, each with a number of outcomes, which help pupils to progress in smaller steps and achieve personal goals, either with or without support.
These Awards focus on the following:
- Acclimatisation to the pool environment.
- Water confidence and individual core aquatic skills.
- Moving and travelling around the pool, giving pupils a feel for recognisable strokes and offering them the opportunity to progress to front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke if they are able.
- Essential water safety.
The School Swimming Foundation Awards include:
- Foundation Awards 1-5.
- Water Safety Awareness Award.
Certificates for each Award are available to download and print from the online Charter hub, available to schools that sign up to the School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.
Supporting resources
Teacher’s guide
A comprehensive teacher’s guide on how to deliver the Foundation Awards effectively is available to download from the Charter hub.
Passports and stickers
Sticker packs and progress cards (passports) to support these Awards will be released soon.
For more information on the resources available to members visit the charter content page.
