The Willows will again be home to a pop-up swimming pool for two weeks between Monday 27th January and Friday 7th February, which has now arrived and been built on the KS2 Playground! The pool is slowly filling up and heating ahead of next Monday’s first sessions, we expect it to be full by Wednesday evening but as you can imagine, this takes a long time with a hose pipe!
The 10x5m, heated swimming pool, which is covered by a marquee awning, will be used for swimming lessons for children across school. There is no cost for parents for these sessions, as we are using part of our School Sports Premium funding to cover the costs of the project. The main aims of the pool visiting school are to:
- Ensure as many children leave school being able to swim the National Curriculum minimum standard of 25m unaided. This means targeting and supporting specific children that cannot yet swim 25m in Years 4, 5 and 6 that have already taken part in curriculum swimming lessons.
- Provide all other year groups with at least one session in the pool to raise the profile of swimming, provide the valuable life skill of water safety and try to dispel any fears the children may have of water from an early age.
The pool and supporting staff will be provided by Pro-Sport, the company we worked with successfully last year. The sessions will be 30 minutes in length, but intensive with no more than 10 children in a group in the pool at a time working with the swimming instructor who will be in the water with the children if needed. Floatation devices will be provided and used for children of different ages and abilities if needed. To find out more about the pool and pro-sport’s procedures, please visit their swimming webpage: https://prosportcoaching.co.uk/swimming/.
We are very excited to get our swimming lessons underway and to quell the excitement, the children will be bobbing out to have a look at the pool in the coming days.
