A mobile swimming pool installed near a school in Vienne to give swimming lessons to children

It is a place that has everything of a classic public swimming pool. There are changing rooms, showers, but also a footbath. And of course a pool, ten meters long, installed on a surface resembling fake grass, under a large white barnum. Here is the brand new mobile swimming pool in the town of Vernon, south-east of Poitiers, which was set up close to the village primary school. Since June 15, groups of CP-CE1 students take turns to take swimming lessons given by a lifeguard from the community.

“We are going to come and pass under the fries by blowing very hard in the water”, indicates the speaker of the day. A successful bet for Manoé and Matthias, who wave to their buddies in the yard, just on the other side of the transparent tarp. “It’s true that it’s weird to have a swimming pool right next to the school”, admits one of them. “A swimming pool at school is still very rare!” Matteo is already putting his socks back on. Usually he won’t “almost never” at the swimming pool, because those of the department are too far away. “Since I don’t go to the swimming pool much, I don’t know how to swim yet.“, he regrets.

For school, we couldn’t get any closer. – Bertrand Hérault, Mayor of Vernon

“It’s true that during the first session, many were afraid of the water, we absolutely had to hold them”, remembers Solange, assistant director of the leisure centre, and responsible for preparing the students to get in the water. “After two or three sessions, that’s it, they are reassured.” Between the successive confinements and the swimming pools closed for work, there is anyway some catching up to do. “We can’t invent swimming pools”justifies Audrey Fayollat, educational adviser to the rectorate of Poitiers in the Poitiers-Sud area. “Suddenly, we do the swimming pool at school! They will have access to the first learning, it creates equal opportunities for all children.”

Only solution to avoid long journeys

An investment that cost in all €25,000 to the municipality, far from the astronomical sums of itinerant swimming pool trucks. Allowing children to go swimming was essential for the mayor of Vernon. “The headmistress of the school had raised the problem”, explains Bertrand Hérault. “If we had done nothing this year, we would have ended up with three years without a swimming pool for the children. Blame it on Covid-19, but also on the work in the swimming pools, including that of Gençay, still closed until at least September.

The community swimming pool of Nieuil-l’Espoir does not do the trick either, lack of available slots for all children. “In this case, you have to go either to Poitiers, Civaux or Vivonne. It’s a little more complicated”he laments. “There, for school, we couldn’t get any closer.” The elected official therefore set up this project from A to Z in a few weeks, constantly having to adapt to the restrictions of the Regional Health Agency and the rectorate. The mobile pool will remain in place until october. Until then, during the summer, it will be used for aquagym and sessions against aquaphobia.