News & Updates

Safety Training Awards (STA) is incredibly pleased to announce that the STA Award in Teaching Swimming qualification has been endorsed against the CIMSPA Swimming Teacher Professional Standard. This endorsement is recognition from the sector’s chartered institute that the STA Award in Teaching Swimming is a professional qualification that meets the needs of employers.

This acknowledgment show that swimming teaching is a highly skilled profession with a natural career and development pathway, with learners able to further their knowledge by progressing onto the STA Certificate in Teaching Swimming to allow them to teach the advanced swimming skills. As part of this endorsement STA have made some changes to the qualification and there is additional content which will need to be included within the course. The qualification objective has also been updated to reflect these changes.

The STA Award in Teaching Swimming aims to produce teachers that can teach the essential swimming skills, water safety and all four key strokes to participants.

Changes

Butterfly, the full stroke, is now included within the course content and practical teaching requirement. As a key charity objective of the STA, water safety has also been incorporated into course content and practical teaching requirement to ensure swimming teachers are promoting water safety throughout all ability lessons. To incorporate these additions, the on course practical teaching requirement per learner has increased by 30 minutes to 3 hours which includes the 30 minute externally assessed lesson. On successful completion of the qualification, learners will be able to teach the four key strokes as well as water safety therefore to evidence this additional work products are required.

Additional work products:

• A 10 week scheme of work for advanced participants – does not include advanced swimming skills, focus on strokes and stroke progression
• A 30 minute lesson plan teaching butterfly and water safety and complete a lesson evaluation on this lesson.

Please note the MCQ assessment questions and pass marks have not changed.

The only amended unit affected by these changes is Planning, Delivering, Assessing and Evaluating Swimming Lessons, the additional assessment criteria within the unit are:

• 2.3: Develop a scheme of work comprising of ten lessons for an advanced group
• 3.4: Develop a 30 minute lesson plan with butterfly as the main theme and water safety as the contrasting activity
• 10.4: Demonstrate teaching progressive practices leading to butterfly
• 11.2: Demonstrate teaching water safety skills
• 15.4: Perform an evaluation of an advanced lesson.

Due to the additional work products and on course practical teaching requirement, the guided learning hours within the Planning, Delivering, Assessing and Evaluating Swimming Lessons unit have increased by 2 hours, 20 hours in total. The recommended content hours have also increased by 2 hours to 40 hours, the qualification can still be delivered over 5 days and the Total Qualification Time remains at 68 hours.

To support ATCs, STA has updated the following STA Award in Teaching Swimming resources which are now available within STA Online:

• Learner Portfolio
• Resource Manual
• Assessment Strategy
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Tutor Assessed Skills Sheets
• Practical Marking Sheet
• Suggested Timetable
• Qualification Specification.

All supporting resource documents are now version v22.2. The STA Safeguarding Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adult documents remain unaffected. The STA Award in Teaching Swimming Resource Manual has been updated to reflect these additions, the updated e-manual is available now from the STA Swim Shop. An STA Award in Teaching Swimming Resource Manual Additional Section insert has been created and will be sent out with all STA Award resource manual orders from 12th September.

ATCs can also order the STA Award in Teaching Swimming Resource Manual Additional Section for free, via the STA Swim Shop, to update their current manual stock, however it will also be available via the resource section on STA Online.

The learner portfolio has been updated to include the additional work products however there has been no changes to the revision questions or sample MCQ paper. The learner portfolio is also available as an editable document.

PowerPoints – STA have also created an insert PowerPoint which only contains the updated slides to allow tutors to insert these into an already established presentation. The new full PowerPoint presentation page reference numbers relate to the updated manual.

ATCs must use the updated resources and course content for all courses starting on or after Monday 3rd October 2022.

If a swimming teacher who completed the STA Award in Teaching Swimming before these changes, wishes to apply for CIMSPA membership, STA have created an upskill pathway. Please note, this is not mandatory, the STA Award in Teaching Swimming qualification is still a valid and a fit for purpose qualification, the upskill is only required should a swimming teacher require CIMSPA membership.

For further information on the upskill process please visit resources via STA online.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.