What they say.

We started at fourteen weeks in the warm pool and Evie has never once been frightened of water. Gemma taught me how to hold her more than she taught Evie anything, which is exactly right. At three she went into pre-school without me in the pool and didn't look back at the gallery once. I did a little.

The level finder put Finn in Stage 3 and the teacher agreed after the first ten minutes. What I like most is that they move up mid-term the moment they've got it; Cerys did Stage 4 in nine weeks and was in Stage 5 the next fortnight. The record card comes home and gets read more than her reading book.

Forty-six, never learned, terrified of putting my face in. Four of us in the teaching pool on a Monday night, all equally useless, and Owen in the water with us. I swam a width in week six and cried. Two terms later I swam twenty lengths for a charity and my kids came to watch.

Tom is autistic and the noise of a public pool was too much. Rhiannon took him one-to-one on a quiet Thursday morning, used a picture timetable on the side and the same cubicle every week. A term later he joined a Stage 2 group at the same time of day. He has just got his Stage 4 badge.

Four stars because the Saturday 9am Stage 2 class was full when Alfie moved up and we had to switch to a Friday after school, which is a scramble. The office did offer the first Saturday space and moved him back in January as promised. The teaching is excellent and the progress is obvious; the timetable is just very popular.

Isla had been stuck on Stage 3 at another school for a year. Five mornings in a row in the summer with Sam, same five other children, and she came out with the Stage 3 badge on the Friday and nearly the Stage 4 outcomes. We moved her to Splash for the term after. Daily lessons really are different.