Teaching water safety in schools

Cecilie Elliott (left) and Chonelle Addenbrooke during a water skills session at Durie Hill School. Photo / Paul Brooks

It might have looked like playtime at Durie Hill School, and the children were certainly having a lot of fun in the school swimming pool, but there was a much-deeper, more serious purpose to all the splashing and laughter. The children were learning how to be safe in the water.

Cecilie Elliott, Swimming New Zealand education adviser, was there to teach students and teachers how to enjoy the water with confidence and water safety understanding. It was just the second day of the term and she was helping teachers poolside.
"I have been supporting this school for a while, coming every year, and the teachers have really embraced the Water Skills for Life programme," says Cecilie. "And having this great facility, this pool, has been awesome."

The pool is at the bottom of a hill, overlooked by the main school and kept separate by playing fields. The facility includes changing sheds, and while not new, is well maintained and in good order. It is a tribute to Durie Hill school that it remains and is in use.
It's not all poolside work for Cecilie, who also takes classroom-based sessions at the school as well as teacher professional development around water safety.
"The staff here are so keen to learn," she says.

Cecilie covers a big area, trying to take in as many schools as possible in Whanganui and Taranaki. "Over a couple of years you can see how the teachers have developed." She says that's a big part of the enjoyment of the job. "I'm always learning too, in my role." Terms one and four are spent in the district but in terms two and three Cecilie covers a lot more of the country, taking the message further afield.
There are just a few like Cecilie in the organisation who can give swim teachers the qualifications required to be certified instructors.

Chonelle Addenbrooke is Durie Hill School sports co-ordinator and she says Cecilie has been coming to the school for some years now and it is still exciting to see the children getting so much enjoyment in the water while having a safe experience.
"We are so lucky with this resource [the pool] as so many schools don't have this any more. To be able to have that daily for basically, a whole term, and the confidence that develops in the children over that time is just outstanding."

Chonelle says New Zealand, and especially Whanganui, has so many water environments.
"We've got all these different places where they're swimming, so within our lessons, we try and teach them how to be safe in all those areas.
"Part of the Water Skills for Life programme has resources that the children take home to do, which is also helping to educate the families."

Chonelle is so grateful for what Cecilie brings to the school.
"She is amazing: the stuff she comes in and gives us, year after year, is always different, fresh and new, and she is so motivating. The staff here, we take on everything she does."
She says they use what they learn from Cecilie in the classroom, too.
Over the past few years their teaching programme has changed, from the traditional teaching swimming strokes to water safety skills and confidence in aquatic environments.
"If these kids can leave this school, feeling confident in the water, then that makes us feel our job is done."