DAVE CANDLER

The CEO of the Swimming Teachers’ Association talks to SportsNation about the challenges faced by the aquatics sector – and how the STA plans to tackle them

In June 2023, it was revealed that 660,000 children could be missing out on swimming lessons due to a shortage in swimming teachers. The data, published jointly by the Swimming Teachers’ Association (STA) and Swim England, also showed that there were almost 12,000 vacant roles across the aquatics sector, leading to 65% of learn to swim providers not being able to grow their programmes. Worrying findings, considering that almost one in three children now leave primary school unable to swim.

Shocking as those figures are, they would have been much worse without a ground-breaking initiative launched in 2022 to tackle the shortage in swimming teachers. STAnd Up for Swimming, a campaign funded and delivered by the STA, trained a total of 930 new swimming teachers during the year. What made it special was that the training was offered free to everyone.

Bridging the gap

The campaign was the brainchild of Dave Candler, STA’s Chief Executive, who, by his own admission, had had enough. “We launched STAnd Up for Swimming because we recognised that the industry couldn’t afford to wait around any longer,” Candler says. “There was a group of industry bodies, us being one, who desperately wanted to alleviate an issue which was crippling aquatics. We had lots of great conversations on what could be done, but I kept hearing ‘we need to lobby the government’ a lot. The problem is, that takes time and there’s no guarantee that the government will listen. My view was that we’re the ones that can – and need to – try and improve things, so let’s just get on with it and do it.

“By pledging our own funds, we showed our commitment and support to all those involved in grassroots swimming. As an organisation, we spent more money on STAnd Up for Swimming than we had in the bank when I started in this job in 2016. But we had to do it to ensure we don’t have a lost generation of young swimmers.”

As well as making it free, STA wanted the campaign to have an immediate effect. To achieve this, it offered learners the opportunity to gain an accredited Level 2 Award in Teaching Swimming qualification, making sure that those who qualified could get on the poolside and gain employment quickly. The results were impressive.

Of the 930+ new swimming teachers that STA trained up in the 12 months, 86% found employment as soon as they had qualified.

“UK swim schools had lost 50% of their teaching staff during the pandemic,” Candler says. “So STAnd Up for Swimming came just at the right time; a time when swim schools were struggling to find qualified swimming teachers to meet the post-pandemic demand for swimming lessons. It was a critical issue for our members and swim school partners – and for us equally.

“Yes, there are still teacher shortages, but in just a short time we made a solid positive contribution in helping to close the skills gap.”

Disappearing pools

The lack of swimming teachers, however, is just one of many challenges faced by the aquatics industry – a sector which has been hit particularly hard in recent years. The pandemic closures, the ever-increasing energy and utility prices, inflationary pressures and the cost of living crisis have had a double impact – affecting both the operating costs of facilities and the ability of people to pay to use pools and leisure centres. Spending cuts at local authority level have also had a devastating effect on facility investment. Ageing venues deemed too expensive to redevelop are often allowed to close without replacements. As a result, Swim England estimates that more than 1,000 publicly accessible pools have closed since 2010.

“It’s worrying, the rate at which we are losing pools,” says Candler. “It’s creating huge pressures on waiting lists for children to get into swimming lessons and also changing the facility landscape. Smaller-size, private pools and swimming schools are popping up everywhere. That’s great, but as smaller pools have smaller capacities – yet still relatively high running costs – it means that private operators have to charge more than large, public facilities. A leisure centre might charge £5 per lesson, while private pools can charge up to £15 or more. That creates a huge barrier for many.”

It is worrying, the rate at which we are losing pools

Identifying opportunities

Yet, when listing the strengths and opportunities of the sector, Candler remains optimistic and predicts that aquatics in the UK has a bright future. “Demand for swimming has never been higher,” he says. “I’ve been working in aquatics since I was 16 and I’ve never known anything like it.

“What the pandemic did was make people realise how important physical fitness is. The message that underlying health issues would make COVID-19 worse changed how many people saw exercise. It also made people realise how great physical activity was for mental health.”

He also sees huge opportunities in the way the wider physical activity sector is increasingly making a case for being included in health policies and planning.

“Ukactive has done a very good job on this, highlighting how getting people more active could save the UK economy up to £17bn a year through easing pressures on the NHS and cutting on working days lost to sickness. Swimming has a big part to play in that too, not least through GP referrals and activating people who might find other forms of exercise demanding.

“I also see huge opportunities in getting under-represented communities active through swimming. For example, we’re currently talking with Black Swimming Association (BSA) and seeing how we can work together. In England, 96.5% of Black adults and 95.8% of Asian adults do not participate in swimming activities regularly, so there’s definitely work to be done there.”

Correcting the course

There remain areas in which Candler says the aquatics sector needs to improve itself, as well as those in which it could do with a bit of help from the government. One of the former, he adds, is the way staff contracts are handled.

“When I first started in swimming, as a 16-year-old lifeguard, I was earning more than my friends who worked the tills at supermarkets,” he says. “That has now completely turned on its head.

“Part of the reason we lost so many of our swimming teachers and lifeguards during the pandemic was that they were on casual contracts or self-employed contracts – so there was no help for them through furlough. It also highlighted a wider issue on how pool operators and leisure centres manage staff contracts.

“I’m not going to make many friends among the operators for saying this, but I’d like to see staff at every level given that job security and recognition and this requires a change to the way contracts have been traditionally handled. One of the initial worries we had with the STAnd Up for Swimming campaign was that we’d train all these teachers, for them then to be given contracts that wouldn’t entitle them holiday pay, sick pay or any other rights or perks that they’d get in other sectors – and we’d end up losing them again.

However, I do believe positive lessons have been learned from the pandemic, and that the tide is starting to turn for the better. It was never going to be an overnight fix, especially considering how leisure operators have been hit from every angle over the last few years, and they have had a lot to do and plan for to simply survive, but the tide is turning, and we are starting to see some really positive ‘recruit and retain’ strategies being implemented by our leisure operator partners.

Make swimming teaching VAT-free for all and we would be able to, overnight, tackle the huge waiting lists of kids wanting to learn to swim

For the other major change he’d like to see in the sector, Candler makes a call on government. “Please get rid of VAT for every swim school - including the private ones.” he says.

“Services directly related to delivering education in line with the national curriculum – such as swimming – qualify for VAT exemption, but only for public and ‘not for profit’ operators. So large, nation-wide leisure centre operators which operate as charities don’t pay VAT, but a small pool teaching kids to swim in a village does. The problem with that is that most of those small pool operators stay under the VAT threshold because if they’d start charging VAT, the prices would become too high for everyone. So even if they could teach more kids, they won’t, because they’re worried they’d have to start charging VAT.

“Meanwhile, 90% of the larger private swimming school operators – who already do pay VAT – said they would pass the saving directly to their customers if VAT was cut.

“For me it is a no-brainer. The government isn’t getting VAT from those small swim schools anyway, so it’s not like they’d lose out. Make swimming teaching VAT-free for all and we’d be able to, overnight, tackle the huge waiting lists of kids wanting to learn to swim. In the meantime, we hope the new higher VAT threshold coming in April will make a difference for a few.”

You never know. As it’s a general election year, Candler’s call might just find a favourable ear or two somewhere.