Gia Lai: More than 44 thousand students are taught swimming in schools | Gia Lai Electronic Newspaper

Currently, the province has 64 swimming pools in educational institutions. Of which, 31 primary schools (accounting for 14.76%), 30 secondary schools (accounting for 12.82%) and 3 high schools (accounting for 5.88%). The total number of teachers and staff participating in teaching swimming to students in schools is 406 people (348 people have certificates/certifications in teaching swimming).

Gia Lai has more than 44 thousand students having access to swimming activities in schools. Photo: Moc Tra

Most educational institutions with swimming pools have organized swimming lessons for students in the main Physical Education classes according to the optional content of 2 lessons/week. In addition, some educational institutions also open swimming classes outside of class hours on weekends. As of April 2023, the whole province has 20,036 primary school students, 21,314 secondary school students and 9,930 high school students who know how to swim.

In addition, in the province, there is currently 1 primary school and 6 secondary schools that, although they have swimming pools, cannot organize swimming lessons and only carry out extracurricular activities and special topics on drowning prevention for students. The main reasons are due to insufficient funding for maintenance, lack of swimming teachers and not recruiting enough students...

Faced with the alarming situation of drowning accidents among children in general and students in particular, teaching swimming in educational institutions is considered an effective solution to help children prevent the risk of injury when exposed to water. However, the number of schools equipped with swimming pools as well as the number of students accessing swimming activities in schools is still quite modest when in the 2022-2023 school year, the whole province has up to 495 general schools with more than 320,000 students at all levels.