Here at HLC we echo these statements put forward by the national curriculum and ensure that swimming and physical education are an integral part of what we do. We pride ourselves on providing a variety of opportunities to engage all pupils and encourage them to lead a healthy active lifestyle.

Swimming for each year group is delivered for 2 half terms spaced throughout the year, ensuring that each child in year 3 - 6 will swim for around a minimum 12 weeks during curriculum time which is taught by highly qualified swimming teachers. We also offer two afterschool clubs specifically for swimming to allow all children in year 1-6 extra opportunities to develop the confidence and skills in the pool.

Curriculum lessons are carefully designed and differentiated to ensure all children make progress with children often split into three groups. Most children will start their learning journey by developing water confidence and safety before progressing into the key fundamentals of strokes. This will be progressed to include development of strokes, competitive racing, game play such as water polo and keeping themselves and others safe by learning to perform self-rescue.

The national curriculum requirements for swimming state that pupils should be taught to:

• swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
• use a range of strokes effectively (for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke)
• perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations

GDS (greater depth children) - adjudged based on the fact that they exceed the three above statements
ARE - adjudged based on the fact that they confidently meet the three above statements
WTS (working towards) - - adjudged based on the fact that they are still working towards achieving one, two or all three of above statements
B (below) - working at a lower level than three suggested statements

To break this down further 97% children in year 6 are able to swim a distance of at least 25m by the time they left, with 60% of children able to use a range of strokes confidently and proficiently to swim 25m. However some (38%) are still developing their competence, confidence and proficiency and needed to use floatation aids to support them when using their range of strokes. 24 % of GDS children were able to display competence, confidence and proficiency with lifesaving backstroke and butterfly to a high standard.

100 % of children could perform self based rescue and keep themselves safe when around the pool. Our GDS children even displayed lifesaving skills of others.