Swimming gap widens for disadvantaged pupils as only 55% meet basic targets

In England, the ability to stay alive in water is quietly becoming a privilege of geography and income. A BBC investigation has found that children leaving primary school in the most disadvantaged communities are far less likely to be able to swim 25 metres or rescue themselves from danger than their peers nationally — a gap that reflects not a failure of individual effort, but the slow erosion of shared infrastructure and the unequal weight of circumstance. The curriculum sets the expectation; the system, in many places, cannot meet it.