New push for mandatory swimming lessons at primary schools

The National Swimming Safety Council (NRZ) called on all municipalities in the Netherlands to reintroduce swimming lessons at schools. Currently, only about a quarter of primary school children get regular swimming lessons. “That has to be 100 percent,” NZR director Titus Visser said to the Telegraaf.

“We are a water country, and that brings great dangers. You can limit that if you teach children skills that they can use if they unexpectedly end up in the water,” Visser said.

On Tuesday, Statistics Netherlands reported that 73 Netherlands residents died in accidental drownings last year. Five of the victims were younger than ten, and four others were between 10 and 20.

The number of childhood drownings decreased significantly between 1950 and 1980. Swimming lessons at school played a big part in that, the stats office said. “Since swimming lessons were given almost everywhere in the late 1960s, you saw a decrease in the number of drownings. So it has a positive effect,” a CBS researcher pointed out.

The stats office reported that people who moved to the Netherlands in the past two generations, especially from outside Europe, are at greater risk of drowning. “Mortality due to drowning is over nine to ten times higher among children and young people with a non-Western background than among teenagers with a Dutch background,” Visser of NRZ told the newspaper. “That has to change.”

Swimming lessons at schools are a good starting point. But the NRZ is also working with the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) to offer swimming lessons to adult asylum seekers and refugees.