Great interest in swimming courses in Saxony

After the end of the corona-related restrictions on swimming lessons, clubs in Saxony are registering great interest in beginners' courses. There are queues, swimming halls and training times are generally tight, said the President of the Saxon Swimming Association, Wolfram Sperling. He does not believe that it has been possible to make up for the corona-related shortfall in swimming lessons. However, the association does not have any concrete figures.

There is also great interest in the courses offered by the Dresdner Sportclub 1898 (DSC). "Every year at the start of the school year, we accept 120 children aged four to five into the club," said Dirk Oehme, head of the junior swimming center at Dresdner Sportclub 1898 (DSC). Now it's the turn of the 2019 cohort. But there have already been 140 inquiries for this year alone. In addition, around 50 boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 16 are accepted into the recreational sports team every year. There were 400 requests for this last year.

The DSC also took part in a voucher program for primary school pupils from the Ministry of Culture, which was intended to enable boys and girls to attend swimming courses on their own. In 2022, 67 primary school pupils learned to swim at the sports club and 49 last year. In total, the Ministry of Culture had issued 28,000 vouchers worth 120 euros each for the three coronavirus school years 2019/20 to 2021/22 as part of the "Catching up after coronavirus" program.

The Ministry announced that it was still evaluating how many of these vouchers were actually used. According to the information, it is also unknown how many boys and girls are still unable to swim due to the coronavirus-related cancellation of lessons.

The ministry points to the responsibility of parents. Saxony is one of the federal states in which swimming lessons are compulsory. However, parents also have a duty. As with learning to speak and read, swimming also depends on the necessary training and without the support of parents, success at school reaches its limits, it said.