The Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) has called for PE funding to be focused on swimming after a survey revealed that half of te UK's children aged seven to 11 cannot swim the length of a standard pool.

The survey, conducted by the ASA with support from Kellog's and the institute of Youth Sport at Loughborough University, collected data from more than 3,500 primary schools across England, and gathered opinions from more than 1,000 parents.

The government recommends 22 hours of swimming lessons per year, but only 2 per cent of schools surveyed actually met that target with the report suggesting that children spend just eight-and-a-quarter hours every year in school swimming lessons.

Around 40 per cent of the parents of 10 to 11-year-olds surveyed said that their child could not swim 25 metres.

The Department for Education is giving £150m (US$228m, €175.5m) directly to primary schools to spend on improving PE with each school receiving a minimum of £9,000 (US$13,677, €10,500).

The Department of Education have also invested £750,000 (US$1.4m, €877,600) to develop an initial teacher-training pilot to improve primary PE standards, with the first 120 ready to join schools starting September.