A pool operator and the Victorian education department have been fined $180,000 after an eight-year-old boy drowned while at his first overnight school camp.
Grade 2 student Cooper Onyett drowned on May 21, 2021, at Belfast Aquatics at Port Fairy in Victoria’s southwest while on a trip organised by Merrivale Primary School at Warrnambool.
The school had sent parents permission slips and medical forms before the trip, asking them how far their children could swim.
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Cooper’s mother ticked a box confirming he was a beginner swimmer with little or no experience in shallow water, prosecutor Duncan Chisholm told the County Court of Victoria at Warrnambool last week.
However, the school did not pass the information about students’ swimming abilities to the pool before sending 28 young students there.
The grade 2 students were asked to raise their hands if they could swim when they got to the aquatic centre, Chisholm said.
Children who said they could swim were led to an inflatable obstacle course in the pool’s deep end, however many were ultimately identified as weak swimmers and helped to the shallow end, he said.
Cooper was among the children identified as a weak swimmer and was spotted twice more outside the shallow area — jumping into the deep end and onto the inflatable, which he was told to get off.
A swimmer who was with her daughter later saw the boy floating underwater and initially thought he was holding his breath.
“After about 40 seconds she realised something wasn’t right,” Chisholm said.
Cooper died after attempts to resuscitate him at the pool failed.
On Friday, the Port Fairy Community Pool Management Group Inc and the Department of Education were both sentenced in the Warrnambool County Court after earlier pleading guilty to breaching health and safety legislation over Cooper’s death.
The pool operator was and fined $80,000 and the department was fined $100,000
“Had the information about the children’s swimming abilities been communicated to Belfast, this could have assisted the risk of drowning,” Chisholm earlier told the court.
On Friday the court heard the pool failed to give lifeguards the information and procedures for using the inflatable course and the education department should have reduced the risk of less experienced swimmers drowning by telling the pool about the child’s ability level.
“It’s hard to comprehend how young children could be allowed to use an obstacle course at the deep end of a pool without first taking real steps to objectively assess their swimming abilities,” WorkSafe Health and Safety executive director Narelle Beer said.
“Families also place their trust in education providers to care for their children, it’s not enough just to have parents tick a box on a form, schools must use this information for its intended purpose — to help keep children safe.
“These failures have tragically led to every parent’s worst nightmare and our hearts go out to Cooper’s family and loved ones who should never have had to face such a terrible loss.”
– With AAP