Are you meeting water safety curriculum requirements?

Are you meeting water safety curriculum requirements?

This article is contributed by Life Saving Victoria.

As physical educators, it’s our responsibility to provide our students with tools to support lifelong healthy habits – and this extends to ensuring they have the skills and knowledge to be able to enjoy the water safely.

We can do this by implementing the Victorian Water Safety Certificate (VWSC) in our lesson plans, ensuring we are meeting curriculum requirements as well as giving our students the best chance of being able to enjoy waterways safely throughout their lives.

If you’re not sure what the VWSC is – it’s a Victorian government initiative that outlines six key water safety competencies that students should achieve by the time they finish primary school. It’s an essential part of the Victorian curriculum and teaches potentially life-saving skills to help prevent drowning.

The six competencies taught through the VWSC include:

1. Water safety knowledge
2. Swim
3. Under water
4. Lifesaving
5. Rescue skills
6. Survival sequence

Thankfully, there are an array of resources available on the Swimming and Water Safety Online Toolkit, making it easy to implement the program into lesson plans and ensure students can achieve the six minimum competencies of the program before the leave primary school.

Some examples of the resources include:

• Swim City – an online gamified module for students to learn about how to keep themselves and others safe at various waterways.
• Senior primary HPE lesson plans – lesson plans targeted towards level 5/6 students, which utilise standard PE equipment to get students involved in various water safety learning experiences.
• Virtual reality tours and lesson plans – LSV’s free virtual reality tours allow students to explore various waterways from the comfort of the classroom, and complete engaging activities through the lesson plans included.

In addition to familiarising teaching the competencies in the classroom, schools are encouraged to communicate student achievement with parents and carers so they can take an active role in their children’s’ water safety education.

In 2022, a new look and feel of the VWSC was released, with competencies adjusted to align directly with the National Swimming and Water Safety Framework.

If you would like further information about the VWSC or how to implement water safety experiences in your classroom, contact Life Saving Victoria at education@lsv.com.au or call (03) 9676 6940.