Early years swimming: a way of supporting school transitions?

Informal learning contexts may provide opportunities for adding capital to young children in their years prior to schooling. This paper explores the potential of the early-years swim context to add capital to young children that may position them favourably for the transition to school. Using Bourdieu's notion of capital, the paper discusses the results of child testing of 177 swimming children aged between three and five years. It was found that the swimming children were often significantly better from the normal populations, thus suggesting that the swim environment may be ‘adding capital’ to young children.