Swimming instructor frequently asked questions

In country areas public school principals can sign your Working with Children Check application. 

We appreciate that not all cards and certificates are issued immediately, however all instructors are required to upload proof of qualifications online. Temporarily we accept the following:

• Confirmation emails and letters from AUSTSWIM, including:
  • details of your license allocation
  • the date of the email
  • the details of the sender and recipient.
• Handwritten verification from Royal Life Saving Aquatic Trainers. (Note: Swimming and Water Safety must be able to verify that the aquatic trainers hold current qualification, as in, the aquatic trainer must have current aquatic trainer qualification in their online profile).

These need to be uploaded online. When reviewing Swimming and Water Safety staff will amend the expiry date to reflect a temporary arrangement. Please make sure to upload your card/certificate and change the expiry date once it arrives. You will receive a countdown item in your to do list when your qualification is about to expire, as well as an email from our system when it is a month before expiring. This will enable you to organise a current copy for uploading.

Working with Children Check receipts can also be uploaded online, on the clearances section there is an option to upload a receipt instead of a card.

All qualifications need to be current for you to continue working. To view and update your qualifications and clearances, login and follow the instructions on how to upload your updated qualifications.

It is important that children receive consistent teaching from the same person. Only instructors available for the full duration of a series of lessons will be considered for the full program. If you are unavailable at certain times please add these notes online when applying.

Due to the nature of lessons, appointments are ongoing. We aim to do most appointing about two weeks before programs start. After this time, appointments can still become available for a number of reasons.

If you have not received an appointment you may also wish to register for relief work.

If you are offered an appointment, you will receive an email notification to view it on the system. Once logged in, on the right hand side is a to do list that will indicate if you have an offer of appointment. You can click on this link and details of the appointment will be on the screen.  This is also where you can accept or reject the appointment. Please ensure your email address is always current.

Instructors are required to accept appointments within five working days of notification.  Once an appointment has been accepted, it will no longer appear in your to do list. To view this, go into the my details section where details of all accepted appointments can be found under the appointments tab (including the centre supervisor contact details).

If you are renewing your Working with Children Check online, complete the application using the following:

• (Name of organisation where you engage in child-related work - Department of Education (b) Job/title role in child related work - Swimming Instructor
• Category of child-related work - 04
• Organisation representative’s email - for details contact Swimming and Water Safety on 9402 6195.

If you cannot login, the first thing to try is the forgot user ID/password option on the log in screen.

There are three options on this screen and you will need to use the appropriate one to reset your password:

• for school teachers, staff and students (instructors who are employed full time by the Department of Education elsewhere as a teacher)
• existing instructors (instructors that have worked and have a username beginning with "E").
• new instructors (instructors that have not worked before and have a username beginning with "P").

If you do not know your username you can use your email. You will then receive instruction on how to reset your password.

If this is not successful or your account has been locked, please telephone Swimming and Water Safety team on 9402 6195.

For any queries relating to swimming instructors, contact the Swimming and Water Safety team:

T: 9402 6195
E (VacSwim staffing coordinators): vacswimstaffing@education.wa.edu.au
E (Metropolitan Interm Swimming program coordinators): interm-metro@education.wa.edu.au
E (Country Interm Swimming program coordinators): interm-country@education.wa.edu.au

Please note, for emails you will need to include your full name in the subject line.