Rebecca Adlington: Double Olympic gold medallist marks school swimming anniversary with Victorian-style lesson

Swaying your arms to the strains of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy hardly constitutes a typical modern lesson

Bobbing in a pool swaying your arms to the strains of Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy hardly constitutes a typical swimming lesson in 2015.

But that's the kind of tutelage youngsters could expect back in 1890, when schools in England first introduced swimming as part of the curriculum. This year marks the 125th anniversary of school swimming lessons, which is why the nation's most successful Olympic swimmer of the past century, Rebecca Adlington, joined forces with some of the sport's biggest names to deliver a special one-off lesson in Hertfordshire to 125 local children.

Former world champion Mark Foster and Olympic medalist Steve Parry joined Ms Adlington and the Team GB synchronised swimmer Adele Carlsen at the St Albans Everyone Active leisure centre, where they all gamely swapped their Nylon togs for Victorian-style seaside garb, complete with bloomers and straw hats, in order to mark the occasion.

Pupils attended a "dry land lesson" just as their Victorian counterparts would have done, before performing their synchronised swimming routine, and finished off by splashing around and doing handstands with some of Britain's most famous swimmers.

The event coincided with the publication of the Amateur Swimming Association's 2015 School Swimming Survey, which found only 52 per cent of children in England aged seven to 11 were able to swim 25m unaided, down three per cent on the previous year, despite it being a Key Stage 2 national curriculum requirement.

One third (33 per cent) of parents were unaware of their child's swimming progress and fewer than one in five (17 per cent) primary schools communicated with secondary schools regarding pupils' swimming ability, according to the report.

The importance of swimming lessons in schools should not be underestimated, Ms Adlington insisted. "Swimming is one of the only sports that is a life skill," the Olympian told The Independent. "It could save somebody's life."

Sports Minister Tracey Crouch, who also attended the event, said: "There are patchy areas around swimming and that is something we need to address. That needs to be done in partnership. It's not something the Government can do by itself."