What does NRC | think? The gap between rich and poor should not be between drowning or not

taketonews

Netherlands waterland. The Netherlands will hopefully soon be skating on frozen water land. The Netherlands swim in (open) water country. Or not the latter? Made this week the Mulier Institute that between 2018 and 2022 there was a more than doubling of the percentage of children under the age of sixteen who do not have a swimming diploma; that is now 13 percent. Eleven percent only have an A diploma, 41 percent A and B. While the National Standard for Swimming Safety is the A, B and C diploma. Only then will children have enough skills to swim safely in a wave pool or in open water without current.

The researchers at the Mulier Institute attribute the decline – until 2018 there was an increase in the number of swimming diplomas – partly to the corona pandemic. Swimming pools were then closed, and everyone in the Netherlands has been exercising less since then.

However, it is not as if it was easy to get a child to take swimming lessons before. School swimming, a well-known phenomenon for anyone who attended primary school between the 1960s and the 1980s, has no longer been compulsory by schools since 1985. In only 30 percent of the municipalities, children still have swimming lessons through primary school.

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Exercise as a luxury good: a quarter of children from poor families do not have a swimming diploma

<strong>Children swimming in Berschenhoek</strong> (this article is not specifically about them). In the highest income groups, almost half of the children have all swimming diplomas.” class=”dmt-article-suggestion__image” src=”https://images.nrc.nl/TvcBmCAevpeXYrh4vSpnS5gKFgQ=/160×96/smart/filters:no_upscale()/s3/static.nrc.nl/images/gn4/stripped/data108579334-4ced7d.jpg”/></p><p>Schools also have to do a lot, perhaps too much, to include an hour of swimming per week (and the journey there and back, and the time for changing and drying off) in the lesson hours. Let alone that there are teachers ‘spare’ to schedule for guidance.</p><p>So it comes down to the parents themselves. They have to hope that the swimming teacher knows what he is doing. Teaching swimming lessons is a liberal profession, anyone can offer lessons and issue a swimming diploma – although the National Swimming Safety Council does issue licenses to those who do this professionally.</p><p>If they find a swimming teacher. Over the past decade, swimming pools have been closed, subsidies for swimming pools have been cut, or swimming hours have been limited because municipalities have had to make cuts. There have been waiting lists for swimming lessons for years.</p><p>If municipalities had enough money, they could keep swimming pools open and offer free swimming lessons to children without a diploma, as is already happening in some municipalities. Now they are treading water to keep their financial heads above water, with a new round of cuts in prospect for after 2025.</p><p>Parents also notice that lessons are expensive, partly due to high gas prices. An A-diploma alone quickly costs more than 700 euros, excluding the costs of getting to the swimming pool or the time a parent spends on the sidelines. Swimming lessons are therefore quickly becoming a privilege for children of parents who can afford it.</p><p>The figures from the Mulier Institute show that in families from the lowest incomes, a quarter of the children do not have a swimming diploma, compared to 2 percent of children from families in the highest income group without a swimming diploma. Children with a migration background are the least likely to meet the swimming safety standard – and among that group there are on average ten times more drowning cases.</p><p>The gap between rich and poor should not be a gap between drowning or not. That is a collective interest. Just as it is in the interest of the entire society to ensure healthy residents.</p><p><dmt-icon class=

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