Halo, who manages 22 facilities across Herefordshire, Bridgend County Borough, Shropshire and Wiltshire, has signed a new partnership agreement with STA. This will see the charity and social enterprise start to embed STA’s swimming teaching programmes across its leisure sites from May 2018.

Quality and consistency are the key drivers behind the new partnership with Halo wanting to further raise standards of swimming teaching across the leisure sites it runs on behalf of local authorities.

Andy Walker, Halo’s Aquatics Manager who has recently completed an STA tutor status course in readiness for the launch, explained: With STA we are able to deliver and manage our own swimming training programmes through an internal tutor network. This offers huge benefits to us as a not for profit charity. It means we can control, plan and standardise the quality of training we deliver across our leisure sites, and in line with our staffing needs and budgets.

Plus with STA, we have the assurance that the qualifications being delivered are of the highest order, and our swimming teachers are being trained using the latest learn to swim techniques.

As part of the roll-out Halo’s team of swimming teachers will also be amongst the first to benefit from the introduction of STA’s two new Level 2 Teaching Swimming qualifications; this includes a new Level 2 Certificate which has received endorsement against CIMSPA’s new employer-led Swimming Teacher Professional Standard.

Leanne Dougliss, Head of Sales at STA added: We are thrilled to be working with Halo and we look forward to working with Andy and his team to help them embed our new swimming teachers’ qualifications into their programmes. Together, we can continue to raise teaching standards, open up new training opportunities for Halo staff and attract new people into the swimming teaching profession.