KONFIDENCE JOINS WITH STA TO STAnd Up for Swimming
Konfidence has enjoyed a long partnership with STA, a national governing body for swimming and charity dedicated to the teaching of swimming and saving lives, and this year we are thrilled to be extending our support by co-sponsoring their brilliant STAnd Up for Swimming initiative.
STA has created STAnd Up for Swimming in direct response to the crippling swimming teacher shortage here in the UK, which is affecting the opportunity for children to access swimming lessons. With this also being STA’s 90th anniversary year, they have pledged tens of thousands of their own charity funds to train many hundreds of new swimming teachers for free around the UK in 2022 - their aim is to ensure there is not a lost generation of young swimmers.
Andy Regan, Konfidence’s founder, said: “With millions of children having missed out on starting or resuming swimming lessons over the last two years, and STA recently identifying that swim schools have lost 50% of their teachers during the pandemic, it is so sad to know that many thousands of children are still missing out and are stuck on endless waiting lists because of the current widespread swimming teacher shortage.”
According to STA’s most recent swim school survey more than four-fifths (83%) of the swim schools they spoke to said they had a waiting list, and more than two-thirds agreed the current swimming teacher shortage is impacting on the number of young learners they can teach.
Andy adds: “Here at Konfidence, learning how to swim has been at the core of everything we’ve done for the last 24 years since launching our Original Konfidence Swim Jacket.”
“We are therefore proud to be involved, and play our part in helping to support STA with STAnd Up for Swimming. It is their biggest charity campaign to date, and in the current climate, their most important - the more swimming teachers STA can train, the more children will have the opportunity to access swimming lessons, and learn a key life skill.”
Dave Candler, STA’s CEO, who is celebrating STA’s actual 90th anniversary day on 5th February 2022, said: “STAnd Up for Swimming is an industry-first campaign and it is incredibly important for the future of grassroots swimming; thanks to Konfidence’s generous support, we will now be able to train even more new swimming teachers this year, who will go on to teach many hundreds of children how to learn to swim.”