Winter isn't stopping year 2 students across Canberra from getting in the pool and learning essential safety skills as part of the Aqua Safe program.
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As part of a collaboration between the ACT Education and Training Directorate and the Royal Life Saving Society Australia ACT branch, students will learn a range of water safety skills both in and out of the pool.
For each student, the program will provide 10 lessons in the water as well as five classroom-based theory lessons over two weeks.
The practical lessons from Royal Lifesaving ACT instructors provide students with training in the water aimed at teaching the skills needed in real-world emergency situations.
Aqua Safe differs from traditional swimming lessons in that it includes swimming, survival, and rescue skills that can be applied in a number of aquatic environments.
At the program's launch on Tuesday afternoon, Lyneham Primary School students were delighted to learn how to rescue people using a flotation device and how to enter and exit a boat in an emergency.
Minister for Education and Training Joy Burch attended the launch and said how important it was for students to learn survival skills at a young age.
"As a result of this program, every year 2 student in government schools across the ACT will have received the skills they need to swim."
Royal Lifesaving ACT executive director Cherry O'Connor said year 2 was the right time to start students in the pool.
"They're not too old that they have learnt the wrong way, so we're getting them at the right time," she said.
The program is run with the support of the ACT government which has provided $500,000 to support the program for the next three years.
ACT government senior manager of curriculum Martin Hines was "extremely pleased" with what students were being taught in the classroom-based part of the program.
"The school-based lessons are really good," he said.
"It's fully resourceful; the teachers have everything they need to teach the lesson, so they don't have to be experts to teach it."
Lyneham Primary and Fraser Primary students will be the first to experience the program, but other schools will follow over the coming months.
Lyneham Primary School principal Annamaria Zuffo said her students had responded positively to the program.
"In a country where we're surrounded by water I think it's a great opportunity to introduce some really meaningful learning, and some actual life-long skills," she said.
The ACT school curriculum is the first in Australia to introduce a compulsory water safety program for its school students.
