New BBC research released today, has highlighted a stark divide in swimming and water safety attainment among primary school children in England - reinforcing concerns about unequal access to essential, life-saving skills.
Using Department for Education data obtained through a Freedom of Information request, the BBC found that while 72% of Year 6 pupils nationally could swim 25 metres in 2024/25, attainment fell to just 55% in schools with the highest proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals.
The divide is equally concerning for safe self-rescue.
Nationally, 70% of Year 6 pupils could perform safe self-rescue, compared with just 50% in the most disadvantaged schools.
But the BBC investigation goes beyond headline attainment figures. It explores significant variation among individual schools, differences between urban and rural areas, access to suitable swimming facilities, and the limited time many children have to develop fundamental skills in the water.
Most school groups, the BBC reports, receive just six 30-minute swimming sessions - around three hours of instruction in total. For anyone working across education, swimming and water safety, the findings deserve attention.
We strongly recommend reading the BBC investigation and exploring the evidence in full.
The findings closely reflect many of the challenges identified through Swim:ED's own impact reporting. Our Making Waves, Changing Futures: 2025 Impact Report examined the pressures affecting school swimming and water safety provision - from access to pools and transport costs to limited teaching time and the number of children reaching the later stages of primary education without fundamental swimming and water safety capabilities.
The BBC’s research and our Impact Report use different datasets and should not be directly compared. However, the themes emerging from both are clear.
Access matters. Time in the water matters. And opportunity remains unequal.
If every child is expected to leave primary school able to swim competently and perform safe self-rescue, every child needs a meaningful opportunity to develop those skills. The latest evidence demonstrates that this is not yet the reality for too many pupils, and disadvantage appears to be playing a significant role.
Understanding the scale and nature of the problem is essential to improving school swimming and water safety provision. The BBC’s investigation adds important national evidence to that conversation. It also reinforces the need to look beyond overall attainment figures and understand where gaps exist, which children are being underserved, and the barriers preventing schools from delivering effective provision.
This autumn, we will add further evidence with the publication of our next Swim:ED Impact Report, which examines the latest pupil attainment data and the progress being made in school swimming and water safety education.
Until then, we encourage schools, educators, swimming providers and policymakers to read the BBC’s findings in full.
Swimming is more than a curriculum requirement. It is a life skill and access to it should not be determined by disadvantage.
Read the full BBC investigation