About Us
Founded in 1991, The Swim School started over 30 years ago by my father, ex-professional swimmer, Dave Bond. My Dad successfully ran the swim school for 15 years until he hung up his swimming shorts and passed the armbands to me. However, whilst I have taken over the running of the school you can still find him on poolside most days as our family is still at the heart of our school.
Over the years we feel the school has continued to grow from strength to strength, encompassing modern teaching practices and industry guidelines but maintaining our
traditional, core family values.
We are confident and passionate in our approach to teaching and hope that when you meet us, you feel the same. Swimming is such a valuable life skill and we love to share it with the children we teach. We hope you enjoy your time with us here at The Swim School.
All the best
Sammy
OUR PHILOSOPHY
We believe that learning to swim is an essential life skill and as such, we want to ensure good quality swimming lessons for all children. We aim to maintain a good balance between consistent, quality teaching, small class sizes and affordability. We feel that these components are really important to allow all children to build confidence, learn and progress in the water.
We consider the parents and students at the school part of our Swim School family. With our friendly and approachable ethos, we aim to make children and parents alike feel welcomed, allowing for a close working relationship and a sociable place for children to learn.
Using the Swim England National Plan as a base, we've developed a scheme of work that really focuses on swimming technique with a termly fun splash for free development and practising of skills. At the end of each 10 week course, every child will be rewarded with a certificate for all their hard work.
OUR POOLS
The majority of our classes are based in Hornchurch, with a training pool for our beginner to improver swimmers and a larger teaching pool for our improver, intermediate and advanced swimmers.
Teaching the children across the two pools allows us to ensure we have the right environment for all stages of their learning. It also gives us adequate space for them to progress from beginners at 3-years-old right up to pre-competition standard swimmers.
We also have additional pool time in South Ockendon which is a lovely facility and the perfect size pool for all levels so it is a brilliant option for siblings spanning a variety of ages and abilities.
For more information about each pool please visit their individual pages in the Classes Section.
Our Learn To Swim Programme
Our Learn to Swim Programme has been successfully developed over the last 30 years and is regularly reviewed to ensure it keeps up with modern teaching practices and techniques. Whilst based on the Swim England learn-to-swim programme we have adapted it to ensure consistent quality teaching focusing on good technique and appropriate progressions. We use a standardised teaching programme which allows us to ensure great continuity across all of our teachers, at all of our pools.
To find the most appropriate session for your little one, it is helpful to have a rough idea how they fit into our scheme of work. Please have a read through the descriptions below or for more information, please feel free to get in touch.
LEVELS 1 - 3
We take children from age 3 years-old and upwards into our beginner classes. Children with little to no swimming ability will join us in our level one classes where we can begin to build confidence and teach the fundamental skills of learning to swim. Our level two children are working on full widths of independent swimming and our level three children begin the introduction to the three competitive strokes of backstroke, breaststroke and front crawl.
On occasion, we are also able to offer older beginner classes for children aged 8 - 11. We find it helps these older beginners to be in seperate classes from their younger peers. Please contact us for availability.
LEVELS 4 - 6
At this stage, the children have already grasped the basics of backstroke, breastroke and front crawl. Over these next three levels we will be continuining to improve their technique and and ensuring this can be maintained whilst swimming out of their depth. At this point we will also be introducing butterfly and working on increasing their distance.
LEVELS 7 - 9
The children in these levels are now working on solidifying techniques which allow for most efficient movement in the water. We are also working on maintaining their technique over longer distances from 25m - 100m. In level 9 we also begin to introduce timed swim elements to ensure this technique is maintained once we ask the children to swim faster.
Children who can pass our Level 7 will definitely pass the National Curriculum test for year 6 children.
We believe the children passing Level 9 will be more lifelong, confident swimmers. We would encourage as many children as possible to get to this stage.
LEVELS 10 - 12
We describe these levels as our pre-competition levels. We are focusing on tightening up the efficiency of their strokes, increasing their pace using timed swims, improving their stamina over longer distances and introducing competitive starts and turns.
Several of our staff are also qualified coaches so at this point, if your child is interested in pursuing their swimming further, we can speak to you regarding good options for moving over to a club swimming setting.
For more information or to discuss the best options for you and your child please do not hesitate to get in touch.