Tracey Martin: Kids need water skills

Tracey Martin

In a country with 11,000km of coastline, 425,000km of rivers and streams and 3820 lakes, it is criminal to penny pinch on water survival skills for our children. But that is what the National Government is doing.

Some people might call me naive, but I believe that if the Government instructs public schools, via the curriculum, to teach water safety skills then that Government should provide the money so schools can do this.

While schools receive property money from the state based on their student roll they cannot use it to maintain, upgrade or do major repairs to their swimming pool. They can, however, use it to upgrade their changing rooms. Yet aquatic skills are part of the New Zealand Curriculum for schools.

In reality school pools are classrooms.

The Government is promoting "modern learning environments" and "schools without walls" so how about they walk the talk and recognise that learning also takes place in school pools.

The Government will not provide pools in new schools or replace ones that need upgrading because "the use of community swimming pools provides a safer swimming environment, better year-round facilities and more supported learning environment to students," according to the Ministry of Education's head of education infrastructure (Dominion Post, March 8, 2014).

I would ask the ministry to show us the data that supports this emotive statement about community pools being safer.

Forcing schools to take students to community pools is often costly and valuable teaching time is lost.

How can lower-income parents possibly find the money for these trips?

The day-to-day running and compliance costs for schools with pools have increased substantially over the past two decades.

There's more water testing and schools must have a person who has passed a NZQA unit standard in water quality management. This can be a challenge for some schools, especially small or rural schools.

Our primary teachers are trained to teach water safety and survival skills in school pools.

Aquatic skills sit within the health and physical curriculum and is therefore part of professional development programmes for staff. It took one school just one day to train all their staff - over 20 staff.

The loss of school support curriculum advisers has prompted Water Safety New Zealand and their partners to provide Kiwi Swim Safe training for our teachers.

Good on them, but it's not right they should have to pick up the pieces.

It is not difficult for the Government to change its attitude and support school pools. So here's a simple "how to" guide for the Government.

Step one - allow the property plan funds to be used for pools, pool fencing and equipment.

Step two - tag extra money in the operations grant to cover day-to-day pool running costs.

Step three - continue to work with WSNZ for teachers' professional development and

Step four - work with communities to replace the pools that have been closed or demolished.

-Tracey Martin MP is the deputy leader of New Zealand First and the party's education spokeswoman.