Porsgrunn is a small city in the south of Norway. We are proud to identify ourselves as a happy and child-friendly city. Children and young adults are looked upon as valuable resources, not just as a future generation, but as an important part of our community here and now. They are considered important decision makers and active community participators.
People, and especially children, are made to be physically active. Inactivity is a risk factor to both mental and physical illnesses. Children are building understandings and habits for life as they live and experience life through their young minds. The city of Porsgrunn has, therefore, stated that having active children is an investment in the future.
As a part of this strategy for active children and young adults, the schools in Porsgrunn have been challenged to make strategies to enforce more active everyday life both in schools and after school hours. Parallel to this, a national strategy to improve children’s swimming skills was launched. The reason for the national swimming enforcement strategy had to do with disappointingly low swimming skills among children around the country in 2015; less than 50% of all ten-year-olds were able to swim 200 metres in a swimming pool.
These challenges where met with an innovative approach in Porsgrunn. Innovation is to utilise new services, new products, new forms of communication and/or new ways of organising work. Innovation can be something completely new or something new in executing our services.
The swimming education was analysed, and the results were quite depressing news. Less than 50% of our fourth graders could swim according to the new national standards. In sixth grade, very few additional students had reached the national standard meant to be reached in the fourth grade, and more than one out of three students did not even meet the standards in eighth grade.
The results awoke a desire to do better and the innovating process of creating Norway’s best swimming education began. Porsgrunn Swimming Academy was established.