India should consider making swimming and water safety training a mandatory part of physical education curriculum in schools to check drowning and water-related accidents, experts have recommended.
They include President of Norwegian Life Saving Society Claire Ann Alfonso and senior research fellow at the George Institute for Global Health Jagnoor Jagnoor.
Swimming and water safety has been statutory element of the national curriculum for physical education in England since 1994. Norway introduced the programme in 2015.
According to WHO statistics, over 3.6 lakh people die due to drowning worldwide, and as per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures, 80 people drown in India every day.
“India accounts for a significant proportion of drowning deaths worldwide with more than a third occurring among children who are less than five years of age. Drowning deaths in this age group has been reported to be three times higher in rural areas than in urban areas and this may be due to the high number of open areas of water in and near rural communities, including ponds, rivers and canals,” said Jagnoor.
Jagnoor, who was part of a team conducting a drowning mortality survey in India, also proposed the idea of having mandatory swimming lessons in schools at the World Drowning Prevention Conference in Durban last week.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had, last year, mandated having a sports period in schools daily where students could opt for different sports as per their choice. While swimming is among the available options at schools with required infrastructure, it is not mandatory and does not pertain to water safety.
“Around 80 per cent people drown due to lack of swimming skills. That is why now swimming ability and water competency are a mandatory part of Norway’s school curriculum and are implemented from Class1 to 10. The levels remain different but it is the schools’ obligation to teach them not only to swim but also how to behave in a water environment,” Alfonso told PTI.
“We believe that more countries should adopt the practice and it should become a global phenomenon. Countries like India, where floods are a frequent thing in some parts of the country, training children in water safety becomes even more important,” she added.
The programme includes teaching survival swimming skills including being able to roll into deep water and surface with the head above water, keeping the head above water for 30 to 90 seconds and swimming in controlled manner for 10-50 metres.
There are certain private academies offering these lessons for children in India and some volunteer organisations rooting for the cause. The Rashtriya Life Saving Society (RLSS) India, had recently launched a ‘Swim N Survive Pilot Project’ in Kerala as a water safety initiative to increase the skills of children in order to prevent drowning and increase participation in the safe aquatic activity.
“Inability to swim is a major setback among children. Absence of infrastructures such as clean swimming pools and a structured training programme to cater to the numbers is the biggest challenge in reversing the trend,” said to Rear Admiral Purushottam Dutt Sharma, President of RLSS.
“Even if a kid doesn’t prefer to learn competitive swimming, learning this sport just to survive water accidents can be a savior,” Sharma added.
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