Children learn to swim in temporary pool in 2012 legacy bid

UP to 1,000 schoolchildren are being taught to swim in a temporary pool under a scheme to deliver a legacy from the London Olympics.

Local schools will get free use of the 12-metre teaching pool at the Lilian Baylis school in Lambeth over the next six weeks. The 0.9m-deep pool, similar to a leisure centre teaching pool, was built in the school's sports hall and filled with 65,000 litres of water in four days just in time for the start of term.

Among the first classes were pupils from Vauxhall primary school, including some who had never been in a swimming pool before.

Before coming to London, the pool toured the country and was used in schools in Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester. It is part of a Pools In Schools initiative with Olympic bronze medallist Steve Parry which is sponsored by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Ministers backed the scheme after many schools struggled to find a way to meet the national curriculum target of swimming 25 metres by the age of 12.

Swimming chiefs in London are in talks with organisers of the Games to buy temporary training pools installed in the Olympic Park for 2012 and locate them elsewhere in the capital.

A London Assembly audit of pools last year showed that after decades of closures, about 40 per cent of Londoners lived more than a mile from their nearest pool.

Local MP Kate Hoey, the Mayor's commissioner for sport, said: "This is exactly the kind of imaginative scheme to ensure that, after 2012, facilities improve. This project offers a wonderful opportunity."

Steve Parry, who won bronze in the 200m butterfly at Athens, said: "Lambeth is a key target area for this project. It will ensure that children are given an opportunity they might not have had."