Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – After a strong setback due to Corona and closed swimming pools, significantly more children are learning to swim again in the southwest. There is an enormous need to catch up, said the managing director of the DLRG state association in Württemberg, Eleonore Wagner. According to them, over 11,300 seahorse badges were removed last year – around 20 percent more than before Corona.
With the bronze swimming badge – only then is one officially considered a safe swimmer – the numbers of 2019 could at least almost be reached again. Before Corona, around 6,000 of these badges had been purchased in the country, mainly by children. The good values were achieved thanks to the extreme efforts of voluntary trainers and also thanks to support programs.
But Wagner did not give the all-clear. “Fortunately, the numbers have gone up again, but one cannot yet speak of recovery,” she emphasized. There are still long waiting lists for swimming courses in many places. “On the one hand, this is due to the greater need for trainers, but above all to the need for more water surface and water times,” she explained.
Nationwide, 25 percent of primary schools do not have access to an indoor pool. So far it has not been possible to catch up on the backlog caused by the many canceled courses. Around 100,000 children in Baden-Württemberg start school every year – “by no means all of them will be able to swim before they start school or have gotten a place on a swimming course,” added Emanuel Vailakis, Managing Director of the Württemberg Swimming Association.
According to figures from the German Society for Pools, there are over 600 indoor pools and more than 400 outdoor pools in Baden-Württemberg; including combination pools or natural pools. “Despite the Corona and energy crisis, we only found out about very few pools that had to close permanently,” said a spokeswoman. The lack of water areas for swimming lessons is mainly due to the fact that the pools have too few staff or the use of a pool is not optimally coordinated.
The country has no information on how children’s ability to swim in the southwest is currently doing. This emerges from a response from the Ministry of Education at the end of January this year to a request from the FDP. Nationwide, the number of primary school children who cannot swim has doubled from 10 to 20 percent within five years – not least because of Corona, as a representative Forsa survey commissioned by the DLRG showed last year.
In 2022, the Ministry of Culture launched the “SchwimmFidel” pilot project, which has so far enabled almost 2,300 preschool children to take swimming courses free of charge. Previously, there had been an emergency program to promote courses that were canceled due to the corona virus. According to the information, a total of 1.25 million euros is available annually in the 2023/24 budget to support preschool and primary school children in learning to swim.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:230312-99-921135/2
