Swimming beached Drownings rise as schools in Australia cut lessons

Despite Australia's global reputation as a nation of swimmers and surfers, experts familiar with its public learn-to-swim programme - a "safety net" that once ensured few Australian children missed out - say its systemic erosion is leaving a growing number of people unprepared to safely navigate beaches and garden pools.

- Aston Brown

Drowning was the fate of 104 people who died in waterways and swimming pools across Australia in the past summer. In February, the body of a nine-year-old girl was pulled from a garden pool in south-west Sydney. Last week, ambulances were dispatched to a dam north of Melbourne; a toddler was found unresponsive and could not be revived.

In the past decade, drowning rates have crept upwards, says Justin Scarr, the chief executive of Royal Life Saving Australia (RLS). A report authored by the organisation found nearly half of year 6 students (10-11 years old) could not swim 50 metres - the national benchmark and "bare minimum" required to survive in the water.

From the 1880s swimming lessons were a requirement of the curriculum. The responsibility of teaching every child to swim rested with their primary school and local community. It was, says Dr Steve Georgakis, a sports sociologist and historian at the University of Sydney, a "definer of what it meant to be Australian".

Everybody took part in the annual school swimming carnival, a rowdy day of shrieking and barracking at the local pool. There were competitive races for budding athletes and novelty events for weaker swimmers. However today, one in four schools do not hold swimming carnivals, according to RLS, and of those that do, many just run scaled-down after-school "twilight" carnivals for competitive swimmers only.