The ASA has introduced The New National Plan
for Teaching Swimming.
The new awards have the same names as the previous ones, however the levels are very different and instead of 12 levels there will only be 7, the awards then specialise in either:-
Competitive Swimming
Diving
Synchronised Swimming
Water Polo
We feel children should not be forced to choose at this stage and prefer to continue to develop all swimming skills by incorporating diving etc into our lessons as we do at present. Dolphins has always been a learn to swim club rather than a competitive swimming club and this will remain our priority in the future.
We understand the value of a high quality incentive scheme for children at all levels of experience. For this reason we at Dolphins have taken the decision to continue until the end of the new term with the existing National Plan Awards and then change onto The International Swimming & Water Safety Standards (ISWSS), an award scheme offered by the Swimming Teachers Association.
Distance awards will continue to be available.
For the younger children the awards tie in with the children's CBeebies television programme "The Rubbadubbers" with the certificates featuring characters from the series.
The awards are very colourful and incorporate safety skills at all levels as well as the development of strong swimming strokes. All of the awards are carefully planned and structured to introduce new skills, reinforce those learned in previous awards, and develop new techniques, stamina and understanding.
We hope that in this way all the children will move onto the new awards without feeling a loss of achievement.