School swimming lessons could be back on the agenda after MPs voted in favour of a motion to make swimming a compulsory part of the curriculum again.

Research last November showed the number of children aged between six and 16 who do not have a swimming certificate has more than doubled in the last five years, and ethnic minority children are the least likely to be able to swim. 

The Mulier Instituut found that in 2022 some 13% of children had none of the three certificates, which denote the different levels of ability – more than double the 2018 figure.

Children with an ethnic minority background are also less likely to have a swimming certificate. Some 28% of children in this group have no certificate at all but this drops to 18% for minority children whose parents were born in the Netherlands.

According to statistics bureau CBS, ethnic minority children have a nine to 10 times greater chance of drowning. Last summer, two children drowned in one week, one a six-year-old born in Turkmenistan, the other, a nine-year-old from Afghanistan.

Bringing back school swimming lessons for all would cost between €129 million and €212 million a year, depending on what level they should cover. 

MPs said they recognised that the change could not be brought in overnight, but urged schools and the ministry to start talking about the “most realistic scenarios”.

The motion was proposed by Socialist MP Michiel van Nispen and GL-PVA MP Mohammed Mohandis, who passed his A, B, and C diplomas along with his 10-year-old daughter last month. 

School swimming was compulsory until 1985 but was then left up to individual schools and local authorities to finance. That led to lessons in many places being cut and has also threatened the viability of smaller swimming pools.