August is always a month of preparation. Families are getting ready for the new school year, teachers are planning ahead, and children are looking forward to new experiences and opportunities.

This autumn marks an important milestone for water safety education. For the first time, it will form part of the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum, helping children understand the risks associated with water and how to stay safe.

That’s something I wholeheartedly welcome.

Every child should understand the importance of respecting water, recognising hazards and knowing what to do if they or someone else gets into difficulty. Education has an important role to play in preventing accidents and, ultimately, saving lives.

But water safety education doesn’t end in the classroom.

Knowledge is incredibly important, but confidence and practical competence can only be developed through experience. Understanding the Water Safety Code, recognising hazards and learning techniques such as Float to Live all provide children with valuable knowledge. Learning to swim gives them the confidence and practical skills to put that knowledge into action.

That’s why swimming lessons and water safety education should never be viewed as separate conversations. They complement one another. Together, they provide children with the understanding, confidence and practical ability they need to stay safe in and around water throughout their lives.

At the heart of that journey is the swimming teacher.

Swimming teachers don’t simply teach front crawl or breaststroke. They build confidence, help children overcome fear, encourage resilience and develop skills that can genuinely save lives. They celebrate milestones that often go far beyond swimming itself, whether that’s a child putting their face in the water for the first time, swimming independently or simply gaining the confidence to enjoy being in the pool.

Over the course of a career, one swimming teacher has the potential to positively influence hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. That’s an incredible responsibility, but also an incredible privilege.

If we want every child to have the opportunity to learn to swim and develop these essential lifesaving skills, we need to continue investing in the people who make that possible.
For me, that means more than simply attracting new teachers into the profession. It means ensuring they receive high-quality training, ongoing support and opportunities to continue developing throughout their careers. Great swimming teachers aren’t created by qualification certificates alone.

They’re developed through practical experience, mentoring, continuing professional development and a genuine passion for helping others succeed.

That thinking has been at the heart of the development of STA’s new Level 2 Award in Teaching Swimming qualification.

When we set out to redesign the qualification, our ambition wasn’t simply to update the content. We wanted to create a learning experience that better reflected the realities of modern swimming teaching. That meant giving learners more opportunities to develop practical teaching skills, embracing digital technology where it genuinely enhances learning, reducing unnecessary administration, providing greater flexibility for tutors and ensuring new teachers continue to receive support long after they achieve their qualification.

The result is a qualification that doesn’t simply prepare people to pass an assessment. It prepares them to begin a rewarding career as a swimming teacher, supported by ongoing CPD opportunities, 12 months’ STA membership, a digital portfolio, AI-assisted assessment and a clear pathway for continued professional development in line with the CIMSPA Professional Standard.

Because qualifications are only the beginning.

The real impact happens when a newly qualified teacher steps onto poolside, inspires a nervous child to believe in themselves, helps someone discover a lifelong love of swimming or gives a family the confidence that their child is developing one of the most important lifesaving skills they will ever learn.

As children prepare to return to school this autumn, they’ll learn many valuable lessons in the classroom. Water safety education is rightly becoming an important part of that learning.
My hope is that every child also has the opportunity to reinforce those lessons in the pool, guided by a skilled, knowledgeable and passionate swimming teacher.

Because while water safety education provides understanding, great swimming teachers provide something just as important: the confidence, competence and practical skills that can stay with someone for life.