Yet 36 months since The TES last highlighted the shocking state of school swimming, ministers have failed to bring about an improvement.

Despite promises of catch-up classes, a swimming charter and a water safety website for schools, our survey suggests almost 200,000 children left primary school this year without the necessary survival skills and 110,000 were unable to swim a single 25 metre length of their local baths.

Swimming is about more than the survival chances of a child who falls into a local river or canal, important though that is. A report published by the Department of Health last week predicted 12 million adults and one million children will be obese by 2010.

As Jamie Oliver has proved, children’s health and obesity have moved sharply up the political agenda since 2003. Ministers have been anxious to jump on any football World Cup or Ashes cricket bandwagon. But there is little recognition that, walking aside, swimming is the most popular participation sport in this country.

In England, swimming has become another casualty of the testing and target regime that Ofsted has warned leaves primaries devoting too great a share of their energy to literacy and numeracy. It is noticeable that Welsh schools, free from these constraints, top our survey both for children’s achievements and the time devoted to swimming.

The Government needs to work with councils to ensure every school has a suitable pool within travelling distance. Yes, some Victorian pools may be reaching the end of their lives, but the experience of Hackney (page 6) shows councils should be wary of replacing a number of community pools with a single flagship centre.

While it is up to councils to provide facilities, central government must ensure schools have the funding to provide lessons free of charge. One great advantage of school swimming is that, unlike local clubs, it delivers for rich and poor alike. The problems identified in our survey must not drown out that message.