The disturbing figures for drowning in France, up in 2025, re -light the need to learn swimming for all from an early age. A third of the students entering the 6th grade do not know how to swim. An observation undermined with the Covid crisis and the lack of equipment and staff.
In a platform published in The Parisianat the beginning of August, the Olympic swimming champions, Florent Manaudou and Alain Bernard alert on the urgency of investing in new infrastructure and allowing learning to swim to all.
Figures published by Public Health France on 1is August are disturbing. In 2025, the number of drownings in France was up compared to the previous year. Over the period of 1is June to July 23, 702 drownings were identified against 468 in 2024 over the same period (+ 50 %). 193 people died following a drowning (133 in 2024), an increase of 45 % compared to last year.
These increases occurred in a context of “high temperatures” which led to an “influx of people to swimming sites”, explains the France Public Health Bulletin. During the heat wave period, from June 19 to July 6, the number exploded with 315 drownings including 86 deaths.
The number of drownings and drowning followed by death has been generally higher in the southern regions and coastal regions. The number of deaths has almost doubled in New Aquitaine compared to 2024 and it has more than tripled in Brittany and the Grand Est.
Where for adults, drowning places are more seas and oceans (46 %), for children and adolescents, these accidents often occur in rivers (56 %) and in private family swimming pools (18 %). Places in the grip of parents’ inattention and not monitored by lifeguards.
In 2025, children under the age of six represented 30 % of drownings. And for good reason, a third of the students who enter 6e Do not know how to swim, according to the 2023 survey of the Directorate General for School Education (DGESCO). At the end of the 6e17 % still can’t swim. A figure that remains “catastrophic” for Sandie Nahoum, president of the French federation of lifeguards (FFMNS) who notes and deplores this learning lack.
“The Covid hurt,” she explains, with the closure of the swimming pools, but also the Olympic Games which “forced pools to close to prepare for competitions”.
Learning swimming, a source of inequalities
Faced with the drama of the rising drowning, Sandie Nahoum claims an “emergency plan” and requests “free swimming courses with follow -up for all”. A necessity when access to swimming lessons is a source of inequality. Schools come up against the lack of equipment and the dilapidation of existing swimming pools.
In the 2022-2023 school year, 10 % of colleges do not have access to a swimming pool, according to the DGESCO. Inequalities are widening for reinforced priority education establishments, where only 62.9 % of students at the end of 6e know how to swim (compared to 85.6 % excluding priority education).
The president of the FFMNS also deplores the lack of staff. For a class of 25 to 30 students, only two lifeguards provide swimming lessons. It calls for prevention in schools on the dangers linked to swimming, such as the risks of hydrocution or the specificities of each sea and ocean: “In New Aquitaine, the risk is baïne, in the North, sand banks”.
