Press Release

Pool Safety In Schools - Top Priority For Kent County Council

March 2008

Kent County Council has adopted the Swimming Teachers Association’s (STA) Pool Safety Award as a standard across all of its 650 schools. The joint initiative follows the Council’s re-evaluation of its swimming safety policy “Safe Practice in School Swimming and Water Safety” and the need for any school staff, who attend or participate in teaching or supervising swimming lessons, to have achieved a minimum level of skills training in pool safety. 

The partnership, which is the first of its kind in the UK, plans a series of pilot schemes that will run throughout the 2008 summer term. Kent County Council, which has the responsibility for the education of over 200,000 children in primary, secondary and special schools across its geography, will also be introducing a rolling programme of STA teacher training courses including coaching and safety qualifications and Continual Professional Development (CPD) sessions.

Sharon Denney, Kent County Council’s PE teacher advisor, said: “The catalyst for the development of this pool safety policy was recognition that our existing policy was outdated and in need of attention.  Once we looked into best practice it was clear how much more robust it needed to be.  At that point we took the decision to conduct a major overhaul and contacted the STA, who are the only organisation in the country providing this type of pool safety qualification for the education sector.” 

“The Pool Safety Award is now written into our school safety specification as the minimum requirement needed by school staff responsible for children’s swimming lessons.  We look forward to a long partnership with the STA,” confirmed Sharon.

As one of the UK’s leading QCA accredited awarding bodies concerned with swimming teaching and water safety, the STA designed the Pool Safety Award in response to the gap in the training experience of many school teachers and staff.  It is a fit-for-purpose qualification that provides all the necessary life saving and rescue skills teaching staff need to deal competently with poolside related incidents.

Steve Franks STA’s Operations Director, said: “The issue regarding teachers completing their teaching degree, and having limited swimming and/or water rescue skills remains a real concern.  To date many of the awards that have been available to teachers have had limited success, because they have not been designed with the schoolteacher in mind; in general terms they have been pool safety awards that were created for other professions and then adapted.”

“Therefore STA is leading the way with the Pool Safety Award, as no other qualification currently exists that has been specifically developed for school teachers.” 

Steve added: “Kent is one of the largest Councils in the UK with a CPA ‘excellent’ rated, so training needs to meet high expectations. We are delighted to be working together with Kent to form this partnership and to introduce the STA’s market leading scheme, which will ensure that the schools and their teaching staff are appropriately qualified whilst supervising structured swimming activities.” 

“From a management perspective, the introduction of the Pool Safety Award will also help Kent County Council address issues of due diligence and compliance with HSG 179 and BAALPE 'Safe Practice in Physical Education and School Sport',” he concluded.

For further information about the STA’s Pool Safety Award, please call 01922 645097, email sta@sta.co.uk, or visit www.sta.co.uk.

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