What is Top Up Swimming?

Swimming is not only a healthy activity, but acts as an essential life-skill. Unless completed at Key Stage 1, swimming and water safety are statutory activities at Key Stage 2 – designed to ensure children are able to swim unaided over a distance of at least 25 metres. Swimming is also one of nine work strands within the national PE, School Sport and Club Links (PESSCL) strategy.

In 2004, the Prime Minister announced funding for a national programme of top up swimming lessons to support the weakest swimmers in primary schools. This followed two successful pilot schemes  - which looked at how best to support those children who reach the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2) and are not able to swim.

Top up swimming is an intervention designed to enable every child to achieve the KS2 standard in swimming at primary school. Pupils will be expected to develop the other range of skills related to the KS2 requirements, which are about general water confidence and water safety.

The extra lessons that top up swimming involves are designed to build on the existing swimming arrangements that a school should be running. It exists to support pupils during term time.

Top up swimming can take different forms. In the case of the pilots, the lessons took the form of ten, half hour lessons every day, over two school weeks. School Sport Partnerships have the flexibility to determine how the programme will operate for them.