Water Skills for Life
— Requirements for Delivery Partners
Updated August 2022.
Our Responsibility
What is the Water Skills for Life programme?
Traditionally, there has been a focus on learn to swim programmes in New Zealand. The general assumption is that if you learn to swim, you have the necessary basic skills to survive in the water. We know that swimming ability alone is not enough.
In 2015, Water Safety New Zealand undertook a review into the way basic water survival skills are taught to students in Years 1 - 8 in New Zealand schools. The review looked at national and international water safety, swimming and drowning prevention research to find out whether the current teaching of aquatic education in New Zealand provided students with adequate water safety skills.
Research and advice from New Zealand water safety sector experts indicated that the acquisition of a combination of water safety and swimming skills was the most likely to contribute to a reduction in drownings.
Based on this evidence, there was a clear need for more emphasis on children learning water safety skills prior to stroke and distance focused swimming skills, and that an exposure to a range of aquatic environments is a crucial part of water safety skills learning. It was also identified that there was a need to establish a more consistent national approach to the teaching of water safety skills.
Water Skills for Life was the result and was launched in 2016. It is primarily a water skills based programme incorporating 27 core skills for life-long water safety comprising of seven areas of water survival competencies.
Students are expected to have achieved all competencies by the time they enter secondary school as these skills are crucial for the safe lifelong enjoyment of aquatic activities in a range of environments.
Objectives
1. To ensure that all children in Years 1 – 8 in New Zealand acquire water safety competencies by learning Water Skills for Life.
2. To foster an intergenerational culture change and lifelong water safety learnings by delivering Water Skills for Life to improve children’s ability to keep themselves safe in, on and around the water.
Protect Our Future
What do you need to do as a delivery partner?
1. Contact the Water Skills for Life programme lead, Esther Hone (esther@watersafety.org.nz), to register your interest in joining the programme as a delivery partner.
2. Ensure that all staff involved in the delivery of Water Skills for Life are approved educators. An approved educator is someone that has completed the Water Skills for Life e-learning course (available online taking only a few hours) and having passed the assessment.
3. Ensure that your delivery programme consists of at least eight 30 minute sessions per year supporting students to gain proficiency in all seven of the water survival competencies that make up the Water Skills for Life programme by end of year eight.
4. Assess student capability using the seven water survival competencies. Ensure that your student information is maintained up to date in the Water Skills for Life database.
5. Promote your delivery of the Water Skills for Life programme, consistent with the WSFL Branding Guidelines.
6. Regularly review your delivery programme looking for opportunities to improve the impact and efficiency of your programme.
7. Participate in periodic external assessment of your delivery programme by Water Safety New Zealand. This assessment ensures that your programme delivers all seven of the water survival competencies, confirms your ability to continue to be a part of the Water Skills for Life programme and will identify opportunities to improve your delivery.
What makes a great Water Skills for Life programme?
Demonstrating the inclusion of:
• Maximise engagement and interest levels of both students and teachers through problem-solving and discovery opportunities
• A strength-based approach focuses on the amalgamation of the open water environment and the WSFL competency areas
• Inventive and interesting resources to engage kids and get them thinking about the real world
• A holistic approach toward dynamic and innovative lessons to enhance students learning of the seven WSFL competency areas
Logomark
The Water Skills for Life logo is simple, clean and represents our tamariki safely enjoying the waterways, just like our program. It speaks to our Aotearoa heritage and our vision of safety. Always present the logo centered and with plenty of space so the design can breathe.
How we talk is how
we are perceived.
For people to really listen, you have to have something to say. That why we should only speak if we have anything interesting for people to hear. When we speak, we speak clearly. We write in short sentences and with a simple language.
Tone of voice
Typography
Typography helps the message come through.
Water Skills for Life brings our messages to life by utilising two different fonts; Mori Regular and Mori Light These two work together to create depth and texture to our content.
Mori Regular, the primary, is used for headings and short paragraphs of text. Mori Light, the secondary, is used for running text and longer paragraphs, due to it's readability.
Mori Regular
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
Mori Light
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9.
Graphics are visual
guidance for words.
Words will never be as valuable as visuals, but sometimes to many images at once cause cognitive overload. To help balance this, we use our wave graphic. Communicatively speaking, this wave adds depth and power to our imagery. Simulating the turbluence of New Zealand's waterways.
We use colors to
visually explain our values.
As the vision for Water Skills for Life evolves, the refreshed colour palette encapsulates the flows, currents and power of New Zealand’s waterways.