On October 18, 2022, the regional swimming project with elementary school children, which is led by Dr. Sebastian Fischer, was presented in detail in the HNA: "Kassel is stepping on the gas in promoting the swimming skills of children. Two pieces of good news have now come out of the city 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 of the city. It can be used by the city's schools and will also be available to clubs and the DLRG for swimming courses. According to Mayor Christian Geselle, the model project is intended to meet the growing demand for swimming courses. The city council approved the plans.

The second piece of news is that hundreds of Kassel's after-school children will in future 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, elementary school children will be able to take the Seepferdchen early swimmer's badge. The swimming lessons are given by sports students. The project is supervised by the Sports Institute of the University of Kassel under the leadership of Sebastian Fischer. For the students, it is a "part-time job with practical relevance". This year, the municipal offer was kicked off - as a pilot project, so to speak - by an initiative of the Rotary Club of Kassel. The service club, under the presidency of former Lord Mayor Bertram Hilgen, had 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 as 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," Geselle says. But many children are not safe swimmers, he adds. The pandemic has reinforced this trend, he says. The city of Kassel "therefore wants to lead the way and specifically promote children's swimming skills."

Source article: Hessische Allgemeine (Kassel-Mitte) from 18.10.2022, Page 1

"One third is considered unable to swim"

INTERVIEW with sports scientist Dr. Sebastian Fischer about swimming lessons for elementary school students.

Kassel - In the 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 Kassel in cooperation with the city. For sports scientist Sebastian Fischer from the University of Kassel, who provided technical support for the offer, it was a success: 415 children took part on the day of the test. 235 seahorses and 180 frogs were achieved, which means a seahorse quota of almost 60 percent. He also said that the regularity of attendance of over 90 percent of the children showed how well the project was received.

We spoke to Sebastian Fischer about the fact that fewer and fewer children know how to swim and what the consequences are.

HNA: Fewer and fewer children can swim, what's the reason for that?

Not an easy question. But perhaps we can name three points. 
First, we live in a society with an unbelievable number of attractive sports and cultural activities for children and young people. Looking back over the past decades, that wasn't always the case. This competition is more of a problem for traditional sports. We are seeing declining membership figures in all the 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, but are also using their time to immerse themselves in the media world. 
Secondly, since 2000, one in ten swimming pools in Germany has closed. That's an average of around 80 pools per year. Many swimming pools are pushing back renovation backlogs due to a lack of financial resources. This means that with every square meter of water surface that is lost, the opportunity for teaching opportunities also dwindles.

Thirdly, the Germany-wide obligation of swimming lessons in schools has not yet had any effect. Far too much swimming instruction is cancelled or unfeasible. We see poor supervision ratios between teachers and students and often suboptimal conditions in the pools.

HNA: How much does this worry you? How important is it to be able to swim?

Personally, this situation worries me a lot. I am often asked why swimming lessons are different from other sports at school. And there is a very simple answer: if I can't catch a ball, I'm going to have to deal with a bruise for better or worse in my lifetime. We recognize a coordinative and conditional movement education is important. However, if you don't know how to swim, you will pay with your life in the worst case. 

HNA: How does the situation look in general?

Already 20 years ago, the European regional office of the WHO identified 6389 victims of traffic accidents among fatally injured children under the age of 15, 23 percent, and drowning ranked second. 4679 children died in water, 17 percent.

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

HNA: Where do the accidents take place?

At the age of up to two years it is drowning in bathtubs, one to three year olds often drown in the home garden pond, for two to six year olds the open waters in the city or municipality are the main danger points. Children over the age of six drown in swimming pools and for children over the age of eight it is ocean 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 according to levels of ability, an overrepresentation of inexperienced and poor swimmers on the school side becomes apparent. The proportion of proficient swimmers is not much higher among children who learned to swim within the family or in a course.

This result shows not so much 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 schools have to travel a distance of ten kilometers or more to the nearest indoor swimming pool. Swimming is neglected in many schools. Twenty percent of elementary schools have no access to an indoor swimming pool at all.

And then we are experiencing the death of swimming pools nationwide.

HNA: Where does Kassel stand in this respect?

In Kassel, we have a very good starting position compared to the Germany-wide trend. The large pools in the city have been recently renovated. We have a pool landscape that offers everything from sports pools to 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 that at least 90 percent of elementary school children can be described as swimmers. The realistic assessment is that one third of our elementary school children are considered unable to swim. 

Recent studies have shown: At the end of elementary school, the rate of non-swimmers is twelve percent; 24 percent of children have not earned a badge and 35 percent have taken a seahorse. Nineteen percent have earned a bronze swimming badge, 8 percent have earned a silver badge, and 2 percent have earned 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 swimming project of the Rotarians. What were the challenges?

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

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

HNA: After Corona comes the next crisis: energy-saving measures will ensure that pools will operate on a limited basis in the future. What do you think about that?

Compared to many others, I don't see the lowering of the temperature - apart from the teaching pool - so skeptically. I am of the opinion that through adapted exercise content and new forms of exercise, swimming education can continue without restrictions.

I am more critical when I see the price increases, for example, for swimming pool admission in the future. Here the public authorities are asked to counteract as long as possible, in order to make an access to supervised water areas possible for a broad mass in the society. If children and young people switch to unsupervised water areas - such as rivers or lakes in summer - our society will pay with an exponential increase in bathing accidents.

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