After watching successful school swimming carnivals for many years and enjoying the House Spirit, the friendly competition and athletic excellence, I was saddened to read about the demise of school carnivals. To me, carnivals have always helped to build school spirit and culture and are formative in the rhythm of the school year. I have always been of the view that the child who just ‘gives it a go’ often gets as much out of the carnival as the one who breaks a record.

The demise of carnivals has been happening for a while. There are many reasons for this that will vary across schools in different geographical and social demographic areas and include the cost and difficulty of pool hire. Sadly, the ‘safety net’ that once existed through the school carnivals is disappearing.

The article linked below reports that the trend in drownings is going in the wrong direction. Even before the horror of the Easter school holidays, by March this year there had been a 14% increase on the five-year average. In a country surrounded by water, where most of the population live on the coast, what an awful place to find ourselves.

Swimming lessons were slow to recover after the pandemic as centres struggled to find coaches and meet the demand. Some children never learnt to swim. Two national surveys from the Royal Lifesaving Society found, alarmingly, that “the children who left primary school without adequate swimming and water safety skills were not improving in high school. That’s when the risk of drowning increases as young people swim with friends and away from supervision.”

In contrast, I watch an outstanding Learn to Swim and Squad Program at KRB Swimming that caters for a range of swimmers and outstanding staff who build a supportive culture for all. I see our students participating at very high levels in both primary and secondary swimming carnivals. In Term 1, I was proud of the number of our students involved in swimming at both State and National level as well as the students who were involved in surf carnivals through their local clubs through to the National level.

I would hope that, as a society, we are able to do more in the coming years to improve access to swimming lessons and create generations who are aware of the dangers but who are able to participate and enjoy all our beautiful environment offers.

Australian school swimming carnivals could soon be thing of the past