Eldon Primary: the Preston primary with a swimming pool in its grounds

Eldon Primary School has this week opened a pool on its play ground, surrounded by a huge gazebo, which has been paid for using school funding. The pool is currently only planned to be up for three weeks each year, however, Eldon says this could always be extended in future.

Last year, the core offer through the local authority swimming scheme gave year 6 pupils at Eldon 10 consecutive lessons at Fulwood Leisure Centre. However during this annual three week period, year 6 pupils at Eldon will have 15 consecutive swimming lessons in the school’s private pool, whilst year 2, 3, 4 and 5 will have just under half that, and younger years will receive at least three lessons each.

Headteacher Azra Butt said: “We're very passionate about the curriculum that we deliver to our children and swimming is obviously not just a great pastime, it's a life skill as well. We've found since Covid, that the standards in swimming for our children had deteriorated, and so we needed to do something a little bit out of the box, but something that’s going to help children learn to swim quite quickly. So it was the summer of last year that this idea ‘floated’ into my inbox, and I thought it was quite high risk, but I knew if we could make it work, it's an amazing opportunity for the children.

“The great thing is that we're able to offer it to our youngest children as well, so the curriculum has been notched up to include swimming in school from age two up to 11, and it's definitely something that we're going to do year on year. Children of all ages will be able to get in there and see if they can get better than what their previous performances were and I'm also hoping that children will go home and say to their parents ‘I want to go swimming’, so they'll be able to get back into the pool because some of our children said they’d not swum since Covid.”

After Azra’s pool idea was given the thumbs up by the local authority’s health and safety team, the pool was built over half a morning last week, and first opened for pupils on Monday (March 13.)

There will be a fully trained lifeguard and swimming instructor at all times, whilst there will also be regular checks of the water quality and filtration system.

The pool is only for the use of Eldon pupils however Azra hopes that other schools in the area may take inspiration from their idea.

Azra added: “It is an unusual activity to have an on site temporary pool of this nature. It’s just for children but I am going to say that the teachers have got their eye on it!

“But I want to get the message out there to other schools, because I do know that very early on in the year, when I helped lead a Preston North conference for head teachers, everyone was worried about their children’s swimming abilities and we were having a discussion about where else children could go, so this is obviously a bespoke solution to individual schools needs.”