Ripley Court's swimming pool partnership

There is a shortage of swimming facilities in West Surrey and the Ripley Court swimming pool provides a fantastic facility for children in the area to learn this important life skill. Ripley Court has created several local partnerships with organisations to provide swimming lessons. The refurbishment of the Ripley Court pool meant that there was an opportunity to provide more swimming time for external clubs and organisations.

The first partnership, Box Hill Swimming Club is a commercial organisation that provides swimming lessons for children at Ripley Court school on evenings and over the weekend. The need to provide swimming lessons for children in the West Surrey area is acute, not least due to the shortage of swimming pool time. Numbers of children from the local area benefit from the tuition provided by Box Hill in the Ripley Court pool. These are not normally the Ripley Court children as they get swimming tuition as part of their curriculum.

Another partnership is with Turtle Tots, a commercial company that provides opportunities for new mums to go swimming with their new-borns which is held weekly. Additionally, Teach Me Swimming is a swimming tuition company that provides swimming lessons for children in the West Surrey area at Ripley Court School. This partnership was established in 2010, initially for children at Ripley Court. Now, very few children at Ripley Court attend (they have lessons as a normal part of their curriculum) and the vast majority of attendees and beneficiaries are children attending local state First and Primary schools.

Lastly, the partnership with the Surrey Dive Centre, aims to provide water time for training for the Surrey Dive Centre. They are a long-standing local supplier of diving equipment, organised dives and training up to PADI accreditation in the Surrey Area. The need for this was common to most in this area - a shortage of water time in local pools. This is an ongoing project and the factors for success are the delivery of the pool in good working condition and Surrey Dive Centre's continued provision of diving and training as a centre of excellence.