It is important for children to pick up swimming skills but the responsibility of teaching them should be left to their parents, and not schools, said the Parent Action Group for Education (Page) today.

Its chairperson Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim was responding to the statement by Education Minister Maszlee yesterday, urging hotels to allow students to use their swimming pools, for the introduction of swimming lessons in schools, following a rise in drowning incidents involving students.

"We agree that children must know swimming. But how they learn it, is up to the parents, unless swimming pools can be built in all schools...