News & Updates

STA is delighted to confirm that the STA Award in Teaching Swimming qualification has been restructured in accordance with the Swimming Teacher professional standard, resulting in CIMSPA endorsement, and inclusion in the ReTrain project.

This endorsement serves to rubber stamp that the STA Award in Teaching Swimming is a professional qualification that meets the needs of employers. In line with the professional standard, it recognises the qualification’s credibility in being able to train swimming teachers who can go on to teach essential swimming skills, water safety, and all four strokes to participants. It also confirms that the swimming teachers can plan, deliver, assess and evaluate lessons for both adult and child participants.

Kaylë Brightwell, STA’s Head of Qualifications, says: “This endorsement from CIMSPA shows employers / swim schools that they are getting a professionally trained teacher who can hit the deck running, and can start teaching and delivering swimming lessons – thus helping to address the nationwide skills gap.”

For STA too, as part of our ambitions to elevate the role of a swimming teacher and attract new people to the profession, by having two swimming teaching qualifications endorsed by the sector’s charted body – the Award and Certificate – we can show that swimming teaching is a highly skilled profession with a natural career and development pathway.

“For swimming teachers, alongside STA’s other specialised qualifications, our Award and Certificate route offers them a professionally-recognised pathway to progress their skills and knowledge,” explains Kaylë.

“The STA Award in Teaching Swimming focuses on teaching essential swimming skills, water safety, and all four key strokes (in line with the professional Standard), and the STA Certificate in Teaching Swimming offers progression onto advanced swimming skills, in depth technical analysis of the strokes, competitive starts and turns, and teaching survival and rescue skills.”

“Both of these endorsements also allow swimming teachers to gain CIMSPA practitioner membership; again, highlighting how well-trained swimming teachers are within this sector. For employers too, they have the confidence in knowing they are employing professional trained swimming teachers who can offer the full range of aquatic skills based on their own lesson and customer needs.”

Dave Candler STA’s CEO, adds: “As a charity and a national governing body for swimming, we are incredibly passionate about everyone having an opportunity to learn to swim and gain water safety skills / knowledge; and having two CIMSPA endorsed swimming teaching qualifications will allow more people to access professional training and it will support operators / swim schools with their staffing needs.”

For details on all of STA’s Swimming Teaching qualifications, please click here

Safety Training Awards is the awarding organisation of The Swimming Teachers’ Association, and is regulated by Ofqual and Qualifications Wales, and accredited by SQA Accreditation in Scotland.