• The Hauts-de-France region is testing a mobile pool in a small town in the Aisne to allow teaching swimming to primary school students.

  • The experiment should give rise to an evaluation in early October to find out whether the device will be deployed in other deficient areas in swimming pools.

"If you can't go to the pool, the pool comes to you."

For the vice-president of sports for the Hauts-de-France region, Florence Bariseau, the idea is simple.

It remained to be put into practice because in certain sectors, one in three children cannot swim when they arrive at college.

Faced with this observation, the Hauts-de-France region has decided to develop learning to swim in primary school with a prototype of a mobile pool.

It is an indoor mini-swimming pool equipped with a pool of 8 meters by 2 meters, with a depth that can vary between 10 cm (for the little ones) to 1.20 m.

For a fortnight and until October 15, the installation has been seated in Marle, in the Aisne.

Deficient areas

This town of just over 2,000 inhabitants is one of the many deficient areas in the region, where the first nautical basin is located 25 km away, in Laon.

“It takes more than an hour by bus round trip to get to the pool.

For children in primary school, this means a long trip for only twenty minutes in the water, ”emphasizes Florence Bariseau.

Difficult in these conditions, to learn to swim correctly.

This is one of the reasons why, in France, a quarter of accidental drownings concern children under 6 years old.

“In Quesnoy, in the North, we had set up a learning plan around a natural basin, for example,” explains Florence Bariseau.

This time, the region has found a Swiss company, Aqwa Itineris, which markets itinerant basins that are also accessible to people with reduced mobility.

Prototype tested in Switzerland

The idea was born a few years ago in the mind of Jean-François Buisson, during humanitarian expeditions in Morocco.

“As part of my activities, I had to teach swimming to avoid mortality during frequent floods.

Except that in the mountainous areas of the country, there is no swimming pool.

We had to tinker with this traveling pool, ”he told

20 Minutes

.

The prototype was then tested in certain Swiss villages in 2018, before the French Minister of Sports, Roxana Maracineanu, took an interest in the project.

"At its request, the mobile pool is installed in Cergy-Pontoise, for two weeks, in the summer of 2019, for fun activities", indicates its inventor.

First region to experiment with the device

The initiative is taken up by the Hauts-de-France region, but for a more educational experience.

"We are the first region to experiment with this device with the Swimming League and National Education, for a budget of 50,000 euros," says Florence Bariseau.

A pedagogical evaluation must be carried out in early October in a conventional swimming pool to determine the effectiveness of the learning.

"Depending on the results, we will or will not deploy the principle in other deficient areas of the region", assures Florence Bariseau.

The purchase of a pool costs between 500,000 and 600,000 euros.

Much cheaper than building and maintaining a swimming pool.

Sport

Justice suspends the building permit for a training pool in Aubervilliers

Miscellaneous

Headaches and smell of gas, 50 people evacuated from a swimming pool in Seine Maritime

  • Picardy

  • school

  • Pool

  • Students

  • Swimming

  • Society