Winter is coming! The swimming pool, swimming lessons. Really? No, that’s a summer thing. Now it’s time to hibernate: go home, turn on the heater, close the curtains, cook hearty meals, watch football on TV. That will see the family through to the warmer months. Kids can start swimming again then.
Sound familiar? Indeed, parents often pause kids’ swimming lessons over the winter months. But for the health, wellbeing and ongoing safety, is this the best approach? There are a number of reasons suggesting it’s not.
Water safety in summer starts in winter!
Safety is the most important reason parents enrol their kids in learn to swim programs but sadly Royal Life Saving Australia reports that the number of fatal drownings increased last year with the summer of 2024-25 one of the most deadly on record. The beach, pool, and inland waterways are a huge part of the activities enjoyed by kids and families in summer but many, simply, are not prepared, either in terms of safety knowledge or swimming skill.
The minimum level of swimming skill recommended for a Grade 6 student is to be able to confidently swim 50m of freestyle and tread water for 2 minutes. This is a minimum level and does not guarantee safety in an uncontrolled water environment. 48% of Australian Grade 6 children don’t even meet this standard (1).
As a water safety initiative, Royal Life Saving Australia is encouraging parents to enrol their children in swimming lessons during winter to prepare for summer.
Additionally, Royal Life Saving Australia notes that accidents happen in water all year round with 34% of drownings occurring in the autumn and winter seasons. This reinforces the importance of children understanding how to handle emergencies and stay confident in the water during every season of the year.
It’s in the maths
Aisha and Billy are in Grade 2 and have basic water skills, putting their head under water and more-or-less floating on their back with some confidence. Aisha swims all year round and it takes her two years to progress from basic skills to confidently swimming 50m of freestyle. Billie, however, does not swim during the winter months. In his time away from lessons, Billie regresses: kids forget skills and muscle memory has not been established. Things need to be relearnt when he restarts lessons. Other kids with regular lessons are progressing faster. Billie loses some confidence and motivation: it’s harder and harder to get him to lessons. What might have been two years to achieve a minimum level of competence now starts to look more like four, if Billie is to continue at all. Billie faces the increasingly real possibility that he may end up one of 48% of Grade 6 students that doesn’t meet the minimum swimming safety level.
Aisha, meanwhile, is very much looking forward to school swimming sports.
Scrutinising the maths
Swimming competence – and confidence – takes time and commitment. How long will vary from kid to kid but one thing is for sure, it is a skill learnt in years not months. Pamela, a Surrey Park Swimming lead instructor, says, “Children’s skills regress if they take time off. Even during the two week school holidays they’ll come back and it takes them a few weeks to get their skills back to where they were towards the end of the term.” Taking six months off over winter can set skills back significantly, with each of the following a valid consideration:
- Repetition is fundamental for long-term skill retention in children. Repetition and practice are key.
- In younger swimmers, muscle memory, a key to developing as a swimmer, has not had the opportunity to ‘fix in’ making swimming technique more automatic.
- Kids, quite simply, forget stuff. This relates to instruction given by the swim teacher and also to what may be crucial water safety information.
- By continuing to swim through winter, kids have the opportunity to continue to develop and build on the skills and safety understanding that they had been working on previously.
Immunity and fitness
Swimming all year round helps kids stay active, fit, and healthy with benefits to both general physical and mental health. La Trobe University research indicates children who engage in swimming year-round tend to have stronger immune systems and are less susceptible to illness(2). This is very much contrary to the old myth that children will get sick swimming during the colder months, an idea directly addressed, and dispelled, by research (3).
Consistent swimming makes you smarter
The world’s most comprehensive study into the impact of early years swimming, conducted by Griffith University and involving 10,000 children (4), concluded that children in swimming schools appear to be more advanced in terms of their development. Lead researcher Professor Robyn Jorgensen noted, “While we expected the children to show better physical development and perhaps be more confident through swimming, the results in literacy and numeracy really shocked us. The children were anywhere from six to 15 months ahead of the normal population when it came to cognitive skills, problem solving in mathematics, counting, language and following instructions” (4).
And the logistics?
Rolling swimming lessons through from the warmer months straight on into the winter months helps provide kids with consistency of teachers, consistent routine and regular time slots, and allows kids the opportunity to start building swimming friendships with fellow classmates.
A couple of winter tips
The pool environments at Surrey Park Swimming Learn to Swim facilities are warm throughout the year. However, for the walk to, or from, the car, we strongly recommend making sure kids are dressed warmly (not in a wet towel) before and after lessons, with proper footwear and potentially a beanie, keeping feet and head warm. And while all our pools at Surrey Park Swimming are heated, if there is time, a hot shower afterwards will always warm kids up quickly.
References
- https://www.royallifesaving.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/32192/RLS_SwimWaterSafety_NatBenchmarks-Assessment.pdf
- https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/announcements/2024/five-reasons-to-keep-your-kids-swimming-during-winter
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277925217_Swimming_through_winter_necessary_for_children’s_health_and_development_expert_commentary
- https://news.griffith.edu.au/2013/08/13/swimming-a-smart-move-for-children/
