Schools to let kids dip into pools

Roughly 250,000 primary and middle school students in Shanghai are expected to have the opportunity to learn the front crawl for free within the next three years, when a citywide program is launched to teach kids how to swim while improving their physical fitness, local education authorities said Thursday.

Few details were available Thursday, however, on the initiative that plans to expand upon a swimming pilot introduced to students in Yangpu district over the past few years, which has equipped more than 35,000 school children with basic swimming techniques.

But, the city's education commission, which is spearheading the efforts, assured that grade four and grade seven students would soon have the chance to learn how to swim - without parents having to shoulder the cost-burdens of swimming lessons.

"Our goal is to provide students with valuable life skills that can be used when they grow up, which will encourage them to lead healthy, active lives to curb increasing child and adult obesity rates," the education commission said in a written statement provided to the Global Times Thursday. "We have plans to construct more swimming facilities, especially in suburban areas where pools are lacking, in order to accomplish this end."

Zhu Yinqi, chief of public sports for Yangpu's sports bureau, which is in charge of the district's ongoing swimming pilot for students, meanwhile, said Thursday that its annual 1.2 million yuan-program has given students, aged 7 to 15, free weekly swimming lessons since 2009.

Students are brought to nearby public pools for lessons at no fees to them personally, except for the cost of a bathing suit, which they pay for on their own, she said.

"Basically, students learn to swim over the course of a semester," she told the Global Times Thursday. "At the end of the course, they're tested, and at least 70 percent of the students tend to pass, which gives them the capability to swim safely on their own afterwards."

With 27 officially recorded accidental drowning cases involving underage children in the city last year, the program has also been well-received by local parents, who want their kids to acquire swimming skills and techniques for their own benefit, added Zhu.