The HNA reports on the seahorse project during the vacations

On October 18, 2022, the regional swimming project with primary school children, which is headed by Dr. Sebastian Fischer, was presented in detail in the HNA: "Kassel is stepping on the gas in promoting children's swimming skills. There are now two pieces of good news from the town hall. Firstly, a new teaching swimming center with three pools for swimming lessons will soon be built at the Luisenschule in the Vorderer Westen district. It can be used by the municipal schools and will also be available to clubs and the DLRG for swimming courses. According to Lord Mayor Christian Geselle, the model project is intended to meet the growing demand for swimming courses. The city council has approved the plans.

The second piece of news: in future, hundreds of Kassel's after-school children will have the opportunity to learn to swim during the Easter and summer vacations. At the end of the project, which is limited to two years, primary school children will be able to take the early swimmer's badge Seepferdchen. The swimming lessons are given by sports students. The project is being supervised by the Sports Institute at the University of Kassel under the leadership of Sebastian Fischer. For the students, it is a "part-time job with practical relevance". The municipal offer was launched this year - as a pilot project, so to speak - by the Rotary Club of Kassel. The service club, under the presidency of former Lord Mayor Bertram Hilgen, raised 20,000 euros to finance swimming courses for 500 after-school children, with a further 10,000 euros coming from Kassel companies.

The background to the campaign is the increasing deterioration in the swimming ability of children in Kassel and elsewhere. Even before corona, almost 40 percent of ten-year-olds in Germany could not swim safely, explains Sebastian Fischer. "Learning to swim is vital," says Geselle. But many children are not confident swimmers. The pandemic has exacerbated this trend. The city of Kassel "would therefore like to lead the way and specifically promote children's swimming skills"

Source reference: Hessische Allgemeine (Kassel-Mitte) from 18.10.2022, page 1

"A third are considered unfit to swim"

INTERVIEW with sports scientist Dr. Sebastian Fischer about swimming lessons for primary school children

Kassel - In spring and summer, hundreds of Kassel's after-school children had the opportunity to attend free swimming lessons during the vacations. The project was made possible by the Rotary Club of Kassel in cooperation with the city. For sports scientist Sebastian Fischer from the University of Kassel, who supervised the offer, it was a success: 415 children took part on the test day. They achieved 235 seahorses and 180 frogs, which means a seahorse rate of almost 60 percent. The regular attendance of over 90 percent of the children also showed how well the project was received.

We spoke to Sebastian Fischer about the fact that fewer and fewer children are able to swim and the consequences of this.

HNA: Fewer and fewer children can swim, why is that?

Not an easy question. But perhaps we can name three points.
Firstly, we live in a society with an incredible number of attractive sports and cultural activities for children and young people. Looking back over the last few decades, this has not always been the case. This competition is more of a problem for traditional sports. We are seeing declining membership figures in all major associations, for example in the clubs. As a result, fewer and fewer children and young people are spending their free time in swimming pools, instead using the time to immerse themselves in the media world.
Secondly, one in ten swimming pools in Germany has closed since 2000. That's an average of around 80 pools per year. Many swimming pools are stuck in refurbishment backlogs due to a lack of funding. This means that with every square meter of water surface that is lost, the opportunity for teaching opportunities also dwindles.

Thirdly, the nationwide obligation to offer swimming lessons in schools has so far had no effect. Far too many swimming lessons have been canceled or are not feasible. We see poor supervision ratios between teachers and pupils and often suboptimal conditions in the pools.

HNA: How worried are you about this? How important is it to be able to swim?

Personally, I am very concerned about this situation. I am often asked why swimming lessons are different from other sports at school. And there's a very simple answer: if I can't catch a ball, I'm bound to end up with a bruise later in life. We recognize that coordinative and conditional movement training is important. However, if you can't swim, in the worst case scenario you will pay with your life.

HNA: What is the general situation?

Twenty years ago, the WHO European Regional Office calculated that 6389 children under the age of 15 were killed in road traffic accidents, 23 percent, with drowning in second place. 4679 children died in water, 17 percent.

The number of fatal drowning accidents has increased in recent years.

HNA: Where do the accidents take place?

Children up to the age of two drown in bathtubs, one to three-year-olds often drown in the garden pond at home, and for two to six-year-olds, open waters in the city or community are the main danger spots. Children over the age of six drown in swimming pools and for children over the age of eight it is beaches and lakes.

HNA: Don't children learn to swim in their families anymore?

If you ask the children where they learned to swim and divide them into levels of ability, you can see an over-representation of inexperienced and poor swimmers at school. The proportion of proficient swimmers is not much higher among children who learned to swim as part of a family or in a course.

This result shows less the failure of the school, but rather the high proportion of children whose parents apparently have little interest in taking care of their children's swimming themselves.

HNA: What are the conditions like for swimming lessons in schools?

They are not ideal. Hardly any schools still have teaching pools. More than a third of elementary school have to cover a distance of ten kilometers or more to the nearest indoor swimming pool. Swimming is neglected in many schools. 20 percent of elementary school have no access to an indoor swimming pool at all.

And then we are experiencing a nationwide decline in swimming pools.

HNA: Where does Kassel stand?

In Kassel, we are in a very good position compared to the nationwide trend. The large pools in the city have been recently renovated. We have a pool landscape that offers everything from sports pools and outdoor pools to teaching pools.

HNA: What about the goal that primary school children should be able to swim?

We are a long way from the goal of at least 90 percent of primary school children being able to swim. The realistic estimate is that a third of our primary school children are considered unable to swim.

Recent studies have shown this: At the end of elementary school, the rate of non-swimmers is twelve percent; 24 percent of children have not acquired a badge and 35 percent have done a seahorse. 19 percent have a bronze swimming badge, 8 percent a silver badge and 2 percent a gold badge. Studies have also shown that children with a low social status are less likely to be able to swim than their peers.

HNA: You accompanied the Rotarians' swimming project. What were the challenges?

Overall, it was a big challenge to organize the project for hundreds of children: the arrangements with the swimming pool operators, the KVG for the bus shuttle, the after-school care centres, the recruitment of instructors.

The biggest challenge, however, was that most of the children came with no previous experience, as some of the pools in Kassel had been closed for the last two years and swimming lessons in the surrounding area in and around Kassel had been almost completely canceled. As a result, we were faced with the problem that our groups of children had extremely heterogeneous learning backgrounds at the start of our swimming courses.

HNA: After corona comes the next crisis: energy-saving measures will ensure that swimming pools will operate to a limited extent in future. How do you assess this?

Compared to many others, I am not so skeptical about lowering the temperature - apart from the teaching pool. I believe that swimming lessons can continue without restrictions thanks to adapted exercise content and new forms of exercise.

I am more critical when I see the price increases, for example for swimming pool admission, in the future. The public authorities need to take countermeasures here for as long as possible in order to give a broad section of society access to supervised water areas. If children and young people switch to unsupervised water areas - such as rivers or lakes in summer - our society will pay the price with an exponential increase in swimming accidents.

Source reference: Hessische Allgemeine (Kassel-Mitte) from 18.10.2022, page 4