SWIMMING CURRICULUM

The syllabus is expressed as the awards to be achieved by each class. They are not merely badges to be attempted (although that's part of it) or simply the entry standards for the class above (although they are that too). Far more important is that the syllabus, when used in conjunction with the ASA's awards handbook (for the standards to be achieved) and the teacher's and assistant teacher's handbooks (for technical guidance and teaching practices), sets the programme and hence the standards to be achieved. The syllabus is based on the ASA's National Plan for Teaching of Swimming (NPTS) which acknowledges that there are a number of strands to a good swimming programme. The NPTS has been re-classified to reflect the RSC's required areas of development:

          Water Skills and Learning to Swim
          Safety, Survival and Lifesaving (or advanced water skills) Distance and Stamina
          Speed and Competitive Swimming

It is absolutely vital that a programme should cover all of these areas at once (with some exceptions - for example, 'speed' obviously comes after 'learning to swim'). If all the children do is swim up and down the pool, they just get bored and eventually stop turning up.

How to Apply the Syllabus

First, each teacher needs to know where he or she is starting: what awards do the children already have; more important, at the commencement of each term what standard the children are. This will then allow the relevant class syllabus to be derived, including which awards are to be attempted, and therefore the skills and performance to be set and assessed. Of course, its not that simple. Some classes progress faster than others. Some individual children are stronger than others. None of us want to keep moving the children constantly between classes. So we have to be flexible and allow the whole thing to shift down the page as the whole club improves through the year, without necessarily moving everybody between classes. Children should only move between classes when they are much better (or worse) than the others in the class.

Objectives and Lessons

Each teacher needs to have a teaching plan for the term. The plan should be sufficiently well defined for assistants to take over running classes in the event of an absence. Moreover each lesson must have a lesson plan. By not doing so is exactly what leads to a boring programme and children leaving the club.

Targets and Awards

The plan will be important to the students - they thrive on being set targets and knowing they have had to work hard to achieve them. Please do not give awards away lightly and please apply the standards set out in the awards book rigorously. This is very, very important as our individual and collective credibility is at stake. Of course, none of us like failing children when they attempt awards. The answer is to ensure they do not attempt awards until they are fully ready to do so. Know which awards you are able to examine for (Page 6 of the awards book). In essence, the full teachers can examine for every award mentioned in the syllabus and a couple more besides. The ASA will not allow assistant teachers to examine the following and therefore assistant teachers should ask one of the full teachers to conduct the test:

          The National Swim Awards
          Diving Level 2
          Competitive Start
          Swimming Stroke
          Pre-Competitive Development
          Competitive Performance

Technique and Final Points - Some final do's and don'ts:

- Revise technical points and TPs and do not teach something you are not qualified or knowledgeable enough to teach.
- Seek advice and tips from other teachers.
- Non-qualified staff must not attempt to teach alone without a lesson plan that has been prepared by an assistant teacher or teacher and without one of the teachers overseeing the lesson.
- Do not teach points of technique without being sure of them - use the books