SwimDesk for school swimming programs
School swimming programs without the paperwork
Schools send students by the busload. SwimDesk helps council and aquatic centres group them into the right levels, track every skill poolside, generate certificates and send each school its report, all in one place.
Still running school programs on paper?
Most council pools still publish school booking forms as PDFs. The admin behind a single term of school swimming can take days, and it is repeated at every site.
- Schools book with PDF forms and hire agreements emailed back and forth
- Class lists arrive as spreadsheets and get retyped
- A busload of students has to be sorted into levels on day one
- Skills are ticked on paper sheets that get wet, lost or retyped
- Certificates are made one by one at the end of the program
- Every school wants its own report, typed up by hand
- Each site runs the program a little differently
How a school program runs in SwimDesk
- 1
Schools book their programComing soon
Record each school's booking, dates, lanes and year groups in one place instead of PDF forms and email threads.
- 2
Class lists go in onceComing soon
Import each school's student list instead of retyping it, and reuse it for every session.
- 3
Assess and group on day one
Instructors assess students poolside on a tablet and place them into the right level groups, even without wifi.
- 4
Attendance and skills every session
Mark attendance and tick off skills as students achieve them. Progress builds automatically across the program.
- 5
Certificates generated automatically
Digital certificates are created from each student's recorded skills, ready to send to the school.
- 6
Reports for every school
Send each school a report by class or by student, showing attendance, levels and skills achieved.
- 7
One view across your sites
See every school program across all your pools, with the same process at each site.
Built around the programs schools already run
Victoria
Set up the Victorian Water Safety Certificate skills as a level pathway: water safety knowledge, a continuous 50 metre swim, surface diving, emergency response, non-swimming rescues and the survival sequence. The state expects students to meet these by the end of Year 6.
New South Wales
Group students the way NSW school programs already do, into beginner, intermediate and advanced, with the skills for each group tracked session by session.
New Zealand
Run Water Skills for Life programs with the skills recorded for every student, so schools and funders can see who has been reached and what they achieved.
Your own curriculum
SwimDesk supports AUSTSWIM, Royal Life Saving and YMCA curricula, or the levels and skills you already use.
School swimming is growing
$73.3m
Victorian funding for school swimming and water safety over four years (Budget 2024/25)
$7.7m
Extra WA funding for swimming and water safety in the 2026-27 State Budget
256,511
NZ children reached by Water Skills for Life from 2018 to 2023
“SwimDesk has transformed how we manage our school program. What used to take our admin team days of manual work each week now takes minutes.”
“We manage school programs across three sites and GreeneDesk makes it feel like one.”
From school program to squad
The students you meet through school programs can carry their record into learn-to-swim lessons and squads, so nobody starts from scratch.
Questions about school swimming programs
What software do aquatic centres use for school swimming programs?
Many still use PDF booking forms, spreadsheets and paper assessment sheets. SwimDesk brings the program into one place: poolside assessments and level grouping, attendance, skills tracking, automatic certificates and reports for each school.
Can we send reports to each school?
Yes. SwimDesk produces reports by school, class or student, showing attendance, levels and the skills each student achieved.
Can SwimDesk track the Victorian Water Safety Certificate?
Yes. SwimDesk supports any structured curriculum, so the Victorian Water Safety Certificate skills can be set up as a level pathway and tracked for every student.
Do instructors need wifi at the pool?
No. Poolside assessments work on a tablet offline and sync when the device reconnects.
Does it work across multiple pools?
Yes. Councils use SwimDesk to run school programs across several sites with one process and one view.
Do we have to replace our booking or membership system?
No. SwimDesk works alongside the management system you already use, including PerfectGym and Envibe.
Where is student data stored?
Australian customer data stays in Australia, hosted on AWS in Sydney. New Zealand customers are also hosted in Sydney.
See your next school program in SwimDesk
A short demo set up with your levels, your sites and your schools.
Book a DemoFree guide
Child safe checklist for aquatic and recreation programs
Free child safe self-check for swim schools, aquatic centres and recreation programs, mapped to the National Principles, Vic and NSW standards and NZ rules.