Schools struggle with pool funding amid 'shocking' drowning figures

Friday, 29 December 2023

Children at Hira School were excited when the school’s pool was re-opened this summer, but the school says it is a struggle to keep the pool running.

The long-awaited re-opening of a rural school’s swimming pool came with mixed emotions.

Excitement was high at Hira School, north of Nelson in November, when repairs were completed on the pool, damaged during extreme rainfall 16 months before.

But trying to make sure it didn’t close again used up most of the hard-earned money the small primary school raised at its annual fundraiser.

“I find it frustrating because our drowning statistics in New Zealand are really shocking,” principal Nic Moynihan said.

Schools and water safety campaigners are calling on the Ministry of Education to provide specific funding to teach children water safety skills, after another year of high drowning statistics.

“We are expected to teach our children to swim, it is in our national New Zealand curriculum that we have to teach them how to swim, and yet we need to work so hard to financially provide tamariki with an opportunity to learn to swim.”

When the pool was being repaired, the school decided to buy an automatic chlorinator to help cut pool maintenance costs.

A pool needed to be tested for safe chlorine levels three times a day, including on weekends and over the holiday, which could be “incredibly costly”, Moynihan said.

“Either you’re relying on volunteers to do that, or you have to pay somebody to come in.

“It makes it really hard to keep a pool open.”

The automatic chlorinator came with an app that showed what the chlorine levels were, meaning someone only had to go to the pool if the levels needed adjusting, Moynihan said.

Network Tasman stumped up $3000 for the $13,000 equipment, but the school spent most of the money from its annual fundraiser on the rest – money it usually relied on to buy things like sports equipment, she said.

Hira School students Kayden Trusler and Jem South in Hira School’s pool when it was re-opened in November.

“We’re surrounded by water; every town and every city in New Zealand is either near a beach or near a major river.

“It would be great if schools could be supported in maintenance of their pools, or supported in getting tamariki to swimming lessons at public facilities.”

The Ministry of Education said it provided schools and kura with operational funding to achieve the objectives specified in their charter, and it was the responsibility of school boards how to best utilise that funding to meet the needs of their students.

Schools with ministry-owned or integrated swimming pools also received funding for pool maintenance in their property maintenance grant – part of the operational funding, it said.

But several principals spoken to by the Nelson Mail said the operational funding was never enough to meet school needs.

Collingwood Area School and Nelson Central School recently paid big sums to upgrade their pool and fix a leak respectively – out of property maintenance grant. Collingwood said the ministry should provide more funding to schools to run their pools.

Schools said pool upkeep was a huge expense, which included painting and getting new handrails, covers and shades.

Water Safety NZ chief executive, Daniel Gerrard, said around 25% of school children weren’t getting opportunities to learn essential skills like floating and treading water.

He hoped wording around swimming in the curriculum would be “strengthened” to include such competencies, which he said would necessitate a greater ministry focus on helping achieve them.

At the start of the holiday period , 86 people had drowned this year – putting the country on track for around the same figure as last year; the worst year for drownings in over a decade.

A different approach was needed, with many school pools “well past their use by date” and schools without pools (40%) struggling with the cost of going to a community pool, Gerrard said.

“Clustering” of urban school pools was an option – like a secondary school building a new pool with funding from nearby primary schools, and a professional swim school running lessons there outside of school hours – or using natural environments like the beach to teach water skills, he said.

The ministry said under the current New Zealand Curriculum, it was expected that all students would have had opportunities to learn basic aquatics skills by the end of Year 6.

Requirements for swimming and aquatic education “may be updated” under the refresh of the health and physical education area of the curriculum, due soon, acting Hautū (leader) curriculum centre, Claire Eden said.

Schools that were not in the donations scheme could also request a donation toward the cost of swimming, she said.