Earlier this month, our team travelled to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, for the World Conference on Drowning Prevention (WCDP25) to share what we have learned in UK school playgrounds on an international stage.
We went with a strong story to tell. During the 2024/25 academic year, Swim:ED engaged 15,382 children, with 91.1% making measurable progress. Across our first two academic years, more than 20,000 children had experienced the Swim:ED programme.
But we came home with a clear takeaway: water safety success is about more than metres.
WCDP25 brought together people from around the world with a shared purpose: preventing drowning and helping more people develop the skills, knowledge and confidence to stay safe around water. It gave us the chance to share our approach, learn from others and challenge our thinking about effective water safety education.
Taking Swim:ED onto the international stage
One highlight was seeing Andrew Stanton present Waves of Change: Redefining Primary School Swimming and Water Safety with Temporary Pop-Up Pools to delegates from 55 countries.
He explored the challenges UK schools face in delivering swimming – including limited pool access, transport, and the practicalities of taking children off-site – before sharing the Swim:ED alternative: bring the pool to the school.
Andrew demonstrated how the Swim:ED pop-up pool model removes many barriers and shared its impact on children’s swimming ability, water safety knowledge and self-rescue skills.
It was a proud moment. But some of our most valuable learning came from listening to others.
Looking beyond 25 metres
One question stayed with us throughout the conference:
What does it really mean to be safe around water?
Swimming 25 metres is an important national curriculum outcome in England, but WCDP25 reinforced the need for water competence to go further.
Children need swimming skills, but they also need to understand risk, recognise hazards, make safer decisions and know how to self-rescue.
Success can’t simply be measured in metres, and that is the point we kept coming back to.
That thinking also raised an important question: when should water safety education begin?
Children learn road safety from an early age, with messages repeated and reinforced as they grow. Water safety should be no different.
Rather than an add-on to learning to swim, it should be part of children’s education from an early age and accessible to every child.
Learning from around the world
WCDP25 gave us the chance to hear how other countries and organisations are approaching drowning prevention.
We learned from work in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand, explored research into virtual reality for identifying unsafe water environments, and heard about open-water initiatives such as Swim Safe (add link). Sessions also covered flooding, rescue, rip currents, school swimming and water competency.
Different countries face very different circumstances, but four themes came through consistently:
Education. Access. Awareness. Collaboration.
The conference also prompted us to reflect on what access really means.
Schools may choose Swim:ED because local pools are difficult to access, transport is expensive, or travelling off-site takes valuable time out of the school day. But bringing the pool onto school grounds can offer wider benefits.
A familiar environment can make swimming more accessible for children who find large or unfamiliar leisure facilities challenging. Schools have also told us about children building confidence, resilience and stronger relationships with their peers.
Access isn’t simply about getting a child into the water. It’s about creating the right environment for them to learn.
Bringing the learning home
We returned from Egypt proud to have shared the Swim:ED approach internationally – and energised by what we learned.
WCDP25 reinforced that drowning prevention depends on organisations and countries sharing evidence, challenging established thinking and learning from one another.
For the Swim:ED team, that means turning those conversations into action: continuing to develop the programme, building on the relationships started in Egypt and finding new ways to help more children access high-quality swimming and water safety education.
Because being able to swim 25 metres matters less than the skills, knowledge and judgement to stay safer in and around water.