Swimming

Big School Swim hailed as a big success as more than 70,000 pupils take part

22 November 2019 Swim England News

This year’s Big School Swim has been hailed as the most successful so far – with more schools and pupils participating than ever before.

Around 70,500 pupils from 5,733 schools were involved in the week-long event – almost six times more than last year.

Schools and lesson providers across the nation have been telling us how much they have enjoyed the activities.

Lara Moseley of Gatton Primary School in London, said: “We had a fantastic time with the Big School Swim event.

“We turned the event into an internal challenge where each class could win house points for their respective teams. The children had a fantastic time!”

The Swim England initiative aims to increase awareness of why school swimming is so important in setting pupils up with a healthy, active lifestyle and a clear understanding of the three national curriculum outcomes.

Those outcomes are:

• Perform safe self-rescue in different water based situations
• 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.