Love when people make anecdotal claims and extrapolate them to a nation wide crisis. The Herald is such a fear monger.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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They're taking anecdotal claims and using them to personalise actual statistics.
40 per cent of children leaving primary school are unable to swim 50 metres, while only 32 per cent could tread water for two minutes – the national benchmarks for swimming and water safety in 12-year-olds
And that was pre-COVID, before lockdowns meant many children were missing out on learn to swim at key ages. Post-COVID,
39 per cent of year 10 students do not meet the 12-year-old benchmarks, while 84 per cent of 15- to 16-year-olds can’t swim 400 metres and tread water for five minutes – a basic lifesaving requirement and the benchmark for 17-year-olds
They're taking anecdotal claims and using them to personalise actual statistics.
Which is my problem with them, they have actual research and they use a stay at home mums personal experience to try make the situation sound worse than it is.
It's cheap journalism.
Just present the facts and research and stop reaching for ridiculous headlines designed to draw clicks. Kids can still swim, its less than before but we dont have an entire generation that are incapable of doing so.
Data doesn't stop people from smoking, being antivax, etc. Stories move people more than data when emotions are involved. So whoever is writing this is just doing what the data say to do, ironically.
Connecting people with data is fine, but using it to draw conclusions the data doesn't support - like saying aussie kids cannot swim anymore - is just overselling the issue to get more clicks.
Stick to the facts, give case examples of this happening and don't use sensationalism.
Sounds like you want an ABS spreadsheet, not a news article.
Just present the facts and research
You mean facts like more than 4 in 5 teenagers don't meet the basic expected minimum‽ Those stats?
Those statistics are terrifying. Have you seen how much water we play in, in this country?!
@Zagorath, I don't fully understand this, could you explain? If you think that the article has a poor base, why are you posting the article to Australia@aussie.zone?
I don't think the article was poor. @Noite_Etion@lemmy.world does, for reasons that seem perplexingly out of touch to me.
Oh I've misunderstood you at first, sorry. 🙈 I think I understand what you meant now.
When/how are they testing swimming ability? The article makes it sound like some sort of national standardised test, but I don't recall ever being tested on this stuff in school.
In fact, school really didn't play much of a part at all in my learning to swim. We never had "swim carnivals" until high school, and even then I was only required to attend and compete once.
Most of my swimming ability comes from private lessons at local pools and VACSWIM in the summer holidays, as well as lots of recreational swimming from growing up by the beach. Makes me wonder whether part of the problem here is that young families have been priced out of many coastal suburbs and are now moving further inland to find cheaper housing, increasing their reliance on school swimming lessons and private swim centres.
They threw us in the deep end with trackpants and a jumper on and we had to tread water for 5 minutes back when I was like 12. Then we had to take off the heavy clothes in the water and do 50 m. I feel like one of the teachers had a clipboard marking us off, but at least at my school it was expected that every kid could manage that.
Meanwhile my main memory is doing the macarena in the pool with floaties lol
We never had “swim carnivals”
Huh. I was overseas for the end of primary school and all of high school, but I do remember having swim carnivals when I was here in primary school. My school had its own 25 m pool, and so, from what I've seen, do a lot of schools in Brisbane's middle and outer suburbs (I checked 7 near me and 6 did).
I wonder if my experience is unusual in Adelaide too. I'm not aware of many public primary schools that had their own swimming pools here back then. My primary school still doesn't have one despite being much larger now, probably because it's only a couple of hundred metres back from the beach. Their swimming "curriculum" still seems to be entirely comprised of annual lessons at the same swimming pool they sent us to when I was there.
Good question, actually!
I was educated through Catholic institutions in inner-Melbourne, and vividly remember taking swim classes in primary school. I’m sure they handed out some form of certificate of completion, but those would have probably been just a Xerox copy and nothing accredited or formal.
Similar to you, most of my ability to swim came from summers at the local public pool or beaches.
We also had the same competitive swim carnivals in high-school; and it was just taken at face value that every student could swim (and they could).
We also had some swim-focused PE classes if I remember correctly, but I could also be confusing them with swim club as it was so long ago.
Long story short, I don’t actually know how they actually track this metric either - but it does seem a bit wishy-washy, ‘ey?
"any more."
Can they swim "any less?"
How about fewer?
Stannis?
Because Great White Sharks, and crocodiles, eat you.