All of our pupils at St. Joseph’s receive swimming lessons during their time in Year 5 and Year 6. We have followed the ASA’s advice by increasing sessions from 30 minutes to 60 minutes and by having 36 sessions per academic year instead of 30. We have also paid for an additional swimming coach to help to provide differentiation and support for all abilities. These changes have really helped our pupils to make super progress in swimming.

The DFE guidelines state that pupils in KS2 must be assessed against a set of swimming criteria, as part of the PE curriculum. Pupils need to be able to demonstrate that they can swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres. They need to use a range of strokes effectively (e.g. front crawl & backstroke) and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.