Swim England Expected Standards

A complete series of short videos, each featuring the individual outcomes in the Swim England Learn to Swim Framework, Stages 1 to 7, and each outcome for the Swim England Aquatic Skills Framework, Stages 8 to 10 Swimming. These videos do not include Expected Standards for Water Polo, Synchronised Swimming or Diving. These are two of the four frameworks which make up the Swim England Learn to Swim Programme.

The learners and participants you’ll see are currently learning to swim. They’re all working towards or have recently passed the Stage they are in – so they may not be swimming to the Swim England Expected Standard (yet). We’ve showcased a wide-range of abilities and techniques, so the activities you’ll see can be used to guide your teaching. We listened to feedback about previous versions of the videos – and so it is very important to us to show you learner swimmers in their true Stage ability, not a more experienced swimmer who was swimming to a standard that wouldn’t be achievable. The videos show clearly – with a blue pop up tick – when the learner is swimming to the Swim England Expected Standard.

No, standards are the same as they have always been. Previous versions of the Expected Standards videos were filmed using Club or older swimmers. These videos use appropriate Stage swimmers so you can clearly see what the Expected Standard should realistically look like within the Stage.

These videos are intended to be used to refresh your knowledge of the Expected Standards you learnt as a swimming teacher. Use them to ensure standardisation across teachers and centres. You may also choose to use them to show parents/carers/learners the Expected Standard for a particular outcome.

Each short video is accompanied by audio commentary and written text which explains what is being seen on screen in more detail. The videos show clearly – with a blue pop up tick – when the learner is swimming to the Swim England Expected Standard.

In some outcomes, the blue tick may appear more than once. This is because there are different ways a learner can achieve the Expected Standard.

It’s important to be aware these videos are not example best practice ‘lessons’. The videos focus on showing you the Expected Standard for each outcome.

Footage without a blue tick means the learner is still working towards meeting the Expected Standard.

You may notice in some of the higher stages that the learners without a blue tick are now swimming above the Expected Standard and developing into a club setting.

All learners are different and have a range of needs. Swimming teachers should use their expertise to adapt the Expected Standards and outcomes shown in these videos, to be appropriate to the needs of individual learners.

Enjoy these videos! You can come back to them as often as you want to for the duration of your subscription. Any additional videos or upgrades to the videos will automatically be given to you via your Vimeo account, for the duration of the one year subscription.

These videos remain the property of Swim England. Swim England owns the copyright to these videos and therefore they may not be duplicated, edited or published in any other media outlet.

When you download the videos, you can put them on your own server to share with teachers employed within your organisation, but you may not add them to any of your social media channels (for example YouTube), or your own website.

We suggest that you use them to explain outcomes to your customers – and to remind yourself of the techniques you’re expecting to see your learners achieving.

If you have paid for an annual rental subscription, sending the link to another person won’t allow them to view the videos – they will need to subscribe themselves, or you can upgrade to download the complete set.

There are further videos for our Swim England Pre-School Framework and Swim England Adult Swimming Framework in development. We’ll also be adding a set of videos to accompany the Swim England School Swimming and Water Safety Charter.

No, these are incorporated into the relevant outcomes for the strokes in Stages 4 to 7. As with any skill that a swimmer learns, the strokes will start off at a basic level, which will gradually improve as they work through the stages, perfecting different parts of the stroke. For example, we would expect a swimmer, swimming 10 metres to Swim England Expected Stroke Standards in Stage 4, to have a good body position and leg kick, whilst the arms, breathing and timing, will still be at a basic level. We would expect a swimmer completing 25 metres Front Crawl in Stage 7 to have a good stroke in all areas of body position, legs, arms, breathing and timing.

The outcome videos for the four strokes at Stage 5 and Stage 7 have been designed to be slightly longer than all of the others and follow the BLABT (body position, legs, arms, breathing and timing) approach and break this down in more detail. In the description box for these videos you’ll find the time-stamp where each of the elements is described.