Ho Chi Minh City is seeking opinions on the draft Resolution of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Council stipulating the level of support for swimming learning costs and transportation costs to serve the organization of safe swimming teaching for students and trainees at general education and continuing education institutions in the area.
According to the draft, primary school, secondary school, high school students and students of continuing education programs at the secondary and high school levels studying at public and non-public educational institutions in the City will be considered for support if they do not meet the requirements for safe swimming skills through entrance assessment and voluntarily register to participate in the course.
The support level for swimming learning costs is 700,000 VND/person/course. This funding includes the cost of renting a swimming pool or swimming learning location, money for teachers, coaches, rescue workers, and inspection and evaluation costs before and after the course. Swimsuit and personal items not within the scope of support.
For schools that do not have the conditions to organize swimming lessons at their units, the City plans to provide additional support for centralized transportation to pick up and drop off students to swimming learning locations with a maximum level of 20,000 VND/person/session (including round trip and return).
The support is paid according to the actual cost, with full invoices and valid documents and only applies to sessions with organized pick-up and drop-off. In case students move on their own or are picked up and dropped off by parents, they will not be supported.
According to the draft, each student will only be supported once, corresponding to a course throughout the general education or continuing education program, even when transferring schools, transferring levels or transferring programs. If after the supported course, they still do not meet the requirements for safe swimming skills, learners will pay for the next courses themselves.
The policy is expected to be implemented from the 2026 - 2027 school year, funding is guaranteed by the Ho Chi Minh City budget according to the current budget decentralization and is implemented through educational institutions.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, the whole city currently has 1,651 general education and continuing education institutions with 2,110,629 students. Of which, 1,254,761 children do not know how to swim, accounting for 59.45% of the total number of students.
By level of education, continuing education has the highest rate of not knowing how to swim with 79.68%, followed by primary school 75.34%, secondary school 45.73% and high school 41.99%. This shows that students' swimming skills are currently mainly formed through the conditions of each family, not guaranteed by a synchronous training mechanism in schools.
The survey also shows that in Ho Chi Minh City, there are only 182/1,651 educational institutions with swimming pools, equivalent to 11.02%. Thus, nearly 89% of schools do not have swimming pools and must link with cultural and sports centers, clubs, water sports businesses or external service units to organize swimming lessons. Regarding continuing education, no unit is currently equipped with swimming pools.
According to the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training, the above situation shows that the issuance of policies to support swimming lessons and transportation costs is necessary to create conditions for more students to access safe swimming skills, contributing to preventing and combating drowning accidents.
Without a support mechanism from the budget, students' swimming learning opportunities will continue to depend on the school's facilities and the affordability of each family.
