Pools for schools

Adlington helps launch Pools for Schools

By Steve Parry Olympic bronze medallist, BBC commentator and chief executive of Total Swimming

After the Olympics in 2004, my GB swimming team-mate Adrian Turner and I were shocked to find out one in five children leave primary school unable to swim.

We were done with the Olympics so why not start a business?

Within 18 months we had set up Total Swimming. We found kids in deprived areas, where they didn't have facilities, lived miles away from pools and didn't have the opportunity to swim.

A pool takes three to four days to construct and stays for six weeks

We had lots of stupid business ideas but the one that stuck was a plan to take a mobile pool to a school.

The swimming governing body ASA backed our crazy idea and came with us to the government. We ended up getting some money for a pilot programme and before we knew it, we were in Liverpool in 2007.

Since then it has gone from strength to strength, the Olympics has really helped and we now have the opportunity to take pools across the whole of the country.

When millions of Brits can't even swim - in a country that is an island - something clearly needs addressing

On Thursday Becky Adlington and Duncan Goodhew joined us in Preston Park Primary School in Brent to officially announce the involvement of sponsors British Gas, who have allowed us to do some fantastic things.

The main thing to remember is that learning swimming is simple. You just need water space and good teachers.

It's the people that make the difference. At Preston Park, people from all over the community now swim and in a borough that has the fewest pools per person in the country. Kids there now have the opportunity.

When the the programme was in Manchester, we found an eight-year-old boy who hated school and hated swimming.

We eventually got him in the pool and by the time we left he had locked himself in the toilet and wouldn't come out until we promised the pool would stay.

That is something that truly made a difference in someone's life.

When I swam we always wanted the sport to have a higher profile. We didn't have the medallists or the big stars like we do now.

We now have a unique opportunity with the likes of Adlington, Jo Jackson and Liam Tancock acting as role models.

Swimming is a life skill and is also a sport anyone, from the age of two to 80, can participate in

Through this programme we have the opportunity to go round the whole of the country. I really hope councils and governing bodies take all this on board and are inspired to create their own temporary pool solutions.

When new swimming facilities cost between £5m and £50m there is surely an opportunity for something like this that can be taken to any city.

Normally, a mobile pool will stay in an area for six weeks, and requires local partners to find only £15,000 of funding as a contribution to construction, equipment, operating and teaching.

It can be installed in most venues - from the smallest of school gyms or canteens to large stadiums - put together in three to four days, filled with 80,000 litres of water, and takes just two days to dismantle.

Drowning is the fifth-biggest killer among the under-16s in this country, yet swimming is a life skill and is also a sport anyone, from the age of two to 80, can participate in.

When millions of Brits can't even swim - in a country that is an island - something clearly needs addressing.

There is no reason why this programme can't be used all over the country - I have spoken to people in Scotland, Wales and elsewhere. Townships in South Africa have been using these mobile pools for the last couple of years.

When we started this idea in a school we were told we were absolute nuts - and it is!

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You naturally have to be careful with health and safety, but with the right support and solutions, this program really makes a difference.

I don't want every kid to be forced into swimming but having the Olympics in London in 2012 gives us an opportunity to give every kid the choice to be a swimmer and I think we can change the attitudes of a whole generation.

Steve Parry was speaking to BBC Sport's Mark Ashenden.