Drowning is a huge issue that is currently happening in primary school aged children. There are many ways that schools are educating those children on ways to prevent drowning. The HPS schools have a whole school approach to the topic of drowning as it is taught in the classrooms and is in the Australian Curriculum under the ‘Safe Living’ strand in the K – 6 Personal Health and Development and Physical Education and it comes under the sub-section ‘Water Safety’. It is believed that it should be educated in the curriculum as a key learning area and also beyond the classroom. The topics that are covered in this section include: water environment, safe places to swim, safety equipment and safety skills.
Some of the strategies that HPS schools
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This introduction of compulsory swimming lessons is only new and the government is working for this to be applicable to all schools across the entire nation, as they are working to reduce the number of drowning deaths especially in primary school aged children.
One CTL strategy that is being used is the Water Smart program in schools. This is an educational program about water safety that provides good quality teaching resources. It also contains a toolkit, which provides the curriculum materials to teach the water safety unit of work, and it also provides the guide for how to deliver the water safety content (Royal Life Saving).
Another strategy that is being promoted in schools is the ‘Swim and Survive’ program. Swim and Survive is a comprehensive swimming program that is been an initiative from the Royal Life Saving. This program is seeking to “increase the swimming and water safety skills of all Australian children in order to prevent drowning and increase participation in safe aquatic activity.” (Q-One Aquatics). This program is seeking to build swimming skills and also ensure that they necessary skills of survival are being taught to the children, in addition to teaching them strong swimming skills and the effective swimming