Water safety is a vital skill

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle

A rise in the number of drownings in New Zealand over the Christmas and New Year holiday period has put the spotlight on water safety.
Seven people drowned over that period and, with the hot January seeing more people head to beaches, rivers and pools, more lives have been lost.
Water Safety NZ chief executive Matt Claridge says New Zealand is ranked among the three worst countries in the developed world for drownings - and that worrying statistic is something that needs to be addressed.
Education is a key part of staying safe in the water and that often begins at school, where the New Zealand curriculum insists all children should have basic water skills by the time they leave primary school.
One cannot argue with such a worthy ambition but the problems arise when schools struggle to provide an aquatic environment where these lifesaving skills can be learned and practised.
Most parents of school-age children will have been involved in some sort of fundraiser for the school pool. Such pools are expensive to maintain, many are old and rundown and, as the Chronicle reported yesterday, many of our rural schools do not have such facilities at all.
In yesterday's story, NZ Educational Institute president Louise Green said that some 20 per cent of school pools had been closed in the past 10 years because of cost.
If the Ministry of Education says - quite correctly - schools have to make sure their students can swim, then it has an obligation to provide the money. A lot of money has been thrown at safety on our roads and that has seen a steady decline in the number of deaths.
Let's hope water safety can get the same sort of attention.