Transcript part 1

Who are you?

My Names David Brown

and?

Ian Callum

Dr Ian Callum?

Thats correct

What does your ogranisation do?

Well Our organistations objective or mission is to supply swimming pools to  low decile schools and also to raise funds to fund those pools and also the equally if not more important water safety eduction that needs to go with it.

Are you doing it soely with primary schools or is it going to be right through?

The main intention, is to put it first into primary schools, because thats where you want to start the swimming from the very early age and our target is the low decile schools which at the moment cant even afford to go to the public pools even if they are available

and what do you qualify as a low decile school?

Decile 1 to 5

How many staff do you have in your organisation

0

Its a purley voluntary organisition

What is the point of the desired system

The system is to identify from a geographical information system where these schools are how they are clustered together, how they relate to muniple swimming pools, possible long term how they rate geographically to identified water hazards and allied with that a database of schools which would have information which is generally available from the education dept sites in terms of the profile of the school, ethnic composition of students

Why does ethnicity play a role

Because suprisingly because most people consider that polynesianss for instance that come from the pacific islands can all swim where infact its the reverse thats ture there is no swimming oppurtunities in the pacific islands youve got very low coral reefs and outside that you have very deep water and lots of sharks so people do go swimming, so they come here and have go nice safe beaches but they dont know how to swim

And id add to that, that its important in terms of working with the school comunity  to know what the ethnicity of the students are., youre going to get some schools that are are alpomost entirely maori, polynesian or mixtures and that information is quite valuable in terms of structuring a program which involves the community

Okay

The other side is that there are alot of asians and where as a pacific islander may not be able to swim they can appreciate the dangers of the sea, whereas an asian whos never seen the sea before has got no concept of the power of water.

Okay so you mentioned before a water hazard and schools close to water hazards. A water hazard is  justany large body of water or some  wher epople can genuinley go swimming

or actually more importnatly where they can go and drown

o Okay

But a specific eample weve just been speaking to a headmaster, principal this afternoon was great concern to him there was a swimming hole in a old disused quarry not far from his school and the kids were going  down there to swim without understanding in some cases without the ability to swim but without any understanding of the water saftey issues

Okay

What kind of information are you going to be wanting to put into the system? Like How many variables are you going to be looking to put in

its important for us to identify first of all the low decile schools

ok

To identify if some of those are in clusters so that a pool can be shared amongst several schools can be shared between pools, its important therefor that the young children have got the ability to walk to the pool, if the poo was on the otherside of a major road it would be innacesabile, then we would be look at the ability of the school to actually make use of the pool in terms of the water saftey education side

Will you take into account topography, things like maybe a primary school may be really close to a pool but its up a really steep hill.

I think the point ian made that essentially distance isnt the only factor it could be 50m away from a municiple pool but if theirs a major highway between the two, it needs to be taken into account

How many schools/ pools would  you be looking to add into the system or are you just going to do it by genral greater area

Well this is a new zealand wide thing, I dont have the numbers at my finger tips but theres bertwwen 2 or 3 thousand schools  of various kinds of which my geuss is probably 1000 of them