STA Your Leisure Swim Academy FAQs

STA Your Leisure Swim Academy FAQs

We’re passionate about swimming, especially developing water confidence and safety through our lessons, so from January 2025, Your Swim School will become the Your Leisure Swim Academy and teach the brand-new STA Learn to Swim Programme at our Hartsdown, Ramsgate and Blue Wave centres, ensuring that all of our swimmers get the best experience from our lessons.

To help our members and those interested in joining understand the upcoming launch, we have put together the below FAQs to showcase why this is such an exciting development and how the STA will be lots of fun and provide our students with water safety skills that are so important to coastal communities.

1. What is the STA?

The Swimming Teachers’ Association (STA) is an international award-winning charity working towards the objective of preserving human life by the teaching of swimming, lifesaving and survival techniques. As a national governing body for swimming and lifesaving with over 19,500 members, the STA is a leader in the development of swimming lesson and water safety programmes.

2. Why is Your Leisure introducing the STA Learn to Swim Programme?

The STA Learn to Swim programme (LSP), which follows a Grade 1-7 learning journey, has been developed in collaboration with STA members and industry experts to ensure it’s a multi-skilled pathway open to all with water safety and the love of swimming at its heart.

Each grade builds on knowledge and skill development, rewarding achievement through a range of exciting awards and certificates. Grades focus on stroke development, water safety, rescue skills, diving, and other swimming skills to ensure participants are competent within all aquatic skills to create well-rounded smiling swimmers.

3. What does the STA Learn to Swim Programme mean for me?

The STA Learn to Swim Programme will replace our Stage 1-7 pathway with the Grades being aligned to our current Stages. The STA Grades will be more engaging for our swimmers with plenty of fun new awards and water-safety criteria.

4. How will this affect a swimmer’s current progress?

The STA Learn to Swim Programme Grades will be aligned with our current Stages, however, with the STA’s focus on water safety, there will be some additional criteria that will not have been part of our swimming lesson journey before, so, if you notice some percentage drops, not to worry, our Swim Teachers will be helping all students during the first few weeks of 2025 achieve these, we’re dedicated to ensuring all swimmers get the best from the new programme.

On the journey, swimmers will be marked on three levels of the criteria:

Good Try – Skills introduced
Nearly there – Needs further practice
You have got this – Passed

Please note, while we transition to STA, class movements will pause between Sunday, 8 December and Sunday, 12 January. As there is the 2-week Christmas break, we hope this minor pause does not cause any inconvenience. Lessons outside of the break will continue as normal and teachers will continue with the programme.

5. Will there be any interruption to lessons?

Not to worry, your lessons will run seamlessly during the change to Your Leisure Swim Academy. There will be the regular Christmas break for two weeks and we will be pausing class movements from 08.12.2024 until 12.01.2025 so that all progress is carried across. Our Swim Teachers will then get their supercapes on and help assess swimmers in the first few weeks of the new year and then movements will start again.

6. Will this affect my class time or day?

In most cases no, but due to the criteria change we are going to be moving a couple of the main pool stages to another area of the pool. The team will be in touch over the next few weeks to advise of any changes, and rest assured these will be kept to a minimum. Please speak to your Swim Teacher if you have any questions.