Pop-up pools brought to primary schools to teach swimming

The portable pools are taken into school playgrounds

Pop-up portable swimming pools are being taken to primary schools to help children learn how to swim.

The pools, from Progressive Sports, a not for profit company based in South Gloucestershire, remove the transport costs of taking children off site.

"Transportation costs have quadrupled in recent years,'' said Mitchell Quirk from Progressive Sports.

According to Sport England, one in four children can not swim 25 metres unaided when they leave primary school.

This is despite it being a curriculum requirement since 1994.

An All Party Parliamentary Group report on swimming in 2021 said there is a "real danger of a lost generation of swimmers" who were affected by pools being shut during the Covid pandemic.

The report said by 2026 1.2 million primary school children will leave school unable to swim.

The parliamentary report recommended catch-up lessons for children who cannot swim

"Our programme has been designed to address this national crisis there is at the moment with primary school swimming," said Mr Quirk.

"These pools eliminate the barriers that children have when it comes to swimming.

"One head teacher said to me: 'Swimming is the only lesson that could save your life'.

"It's that critical self-rescue skill, so children being safely able to look after themselves and get out of the water without any distress," he added.

Many children do not learn to swim at primary school

The Progressive Sports team said that in six weeks the portable pools more than doubled the number of children they were able to teach to swim 25m confidently.

They also said that three quarters of children they teach have self-rescue skills as a result of their lessons.