Swimming lessons disappearing from Japan's public junior high schools

Japan Times

6 days ago

An increasing number of public junior high schools in Japan are abolishing swimming lessons and replacing them with classroom lectures due to aging pool facilities and growing concerns about heatstroke.
However, experts emphasize the importance of practical swimming education to prevent drowning accidents, and schools are exploring alternative ways to give students swimming experience.
At Obu Minami Junior High School in the city of Obu, Aichi Prefecture, swimming pool lessons have been switched to classroom lectures since last year.
'I have mixed feelings about this as we'd wanted students to develop swimming skills,' said Shoya Narita, a 37-year-old physical education teacher at the school.
A third-year student recalled his experience in the pool, saying, 'I wasn't really good at swimming, but I improved through practice. I'm sad it's gone.'
In Obu, swimming pool facilities at public elementary and junior high schools have been deteriorating in recent years — including incidents of broken poolside structures and malfunctioning water supply systems — making them unsafe for use.
Heatstroke prevention measures and typhoons have also made it difficult to maintain consistent lesson schedules.
Faced with these issues, the city's board of education began reviewing the swimming classes several years ago. A growing debate over teachers' excessive workload, such as water quality management and pool cleaning, was another factor behind the review.
As a result, all nine public elementary schools in the city switched to using public or private indoor pools two years ago. Meanwhile, due to class schedule constraints, the city's four public junior high schools abolished pool lessons last year as it was difficult to secure enough time to travel to and from the pool facilities outside of the schools.
At Obu Minami Junior High, around 10 class periods per grade were previously devoted to swimming lessons each year. However, only two sessions for classroom lectures were held last year — one for students to study and discuss potential dangers in rivers and the ocean, and the other for them to watch videos on how to rescue someone drowning in a pool and what precautions to take near water.
Similar classroom lectures are planned for this year.
'We incorporated a lifesaving perspective,' Narita said. 'We were wondering what to teach, but I believe students' learning progressed through the lectures.'
Under Japan's school curriculum guidelines, swimming is a required subject from the first grade of elementary school through the second year of junior high school. Even if a pool is not available, schools are still expected to cover water safety studies in their curriculum.
Public school pools were constructed nationwide in the 1950s in response to a series of fatal drowning accidents involving children. However, school mergers and aging infrastructure have led to a steady decline in the number of pools in recent years. According to the Sports Agency, there were 7,646 outdoor pools at junior high schools in the 1996 school year, but only 5,959 remained as of 2021.
As the number of school pools decreased nationwide, moves to abolish swimming lessons expanded at junior high schools in the Chubu region as well.
As of the 2023 school year, Gifu Prefecture had ended swimming lessons at 58 schools in 17 municipalities. According to a 2024 survey, Fukui Prefecture had discontinued them at 54 schools in 10 municipalities.
In the current academic year, the same trend is seen in Shizuoka Prefecture, with 52 schools in 16 municipalities; Aichi Prefecture, with nine schools, including the four in Obu; and Nagano Prefecture, with seven schools.
In Mie Prefecture, eight of the 10 junior high schools in the city of Suzuka have switched to classroom lectures. Among them, Oki Junior High School did not build a new pool when it underwent a complete renovation two years ago, citing the poor cost-effectiveness, as the outdoor pool could only be used during the summer.
Japan Aquatics, the nation's swimming federation, has expressed concerns over the decline in swimming lessons at public junior high schools. 'Promoting swimming for health and water safety is part of our mission,' the federation said, urging the national government to ensure that all children have access to swimming experiences.
An official at the Sports Agency said schools should ideally offer swimming-pool lessons based on curriculum guidelines. Alternatively, the official suggested that schools could use public pools or private swimming clubs while also taking into account reducing teachers' workloads.
In Obu, all junior high school students are given tickets to use public pools. For those who wish, the city also subsidizes the cost of taking swimming lessons at private clubs to ensure that students still have opportunities to develop swimming skills.
Keisuke Teramoto, a professor of health and physical education at Aichi University of Education, emphasizes that the issue is not whether schools have or are able to use their pools, but how to ensure opportunities for children to experience swimming.
Teramoto notes that summer leisure activities often involve water, and that without actual experience, children can't truly understand its dangers.
'Over the nine years of compulsory education, schools must ensure children can properly learn how to swim,' he said.
This section features topics and issues from the Chubu region covered by the Chunichi Shimbun. The original article was published June 26.