Blue Skies students learn the art of survival at local swimming pool

Level 2 Blue Skies students had the opportunity to learn from the survival team at RAF Marham about how Tornado crews survive in the event that their plane goes down at sea.

The students learnt how to deploy their life jackets on impacting into the water, how to detach themselves from the parachute and then use the individual life rafts to get themselves out of the water to await rescue. They also put their new found leadership skills into practice to help them use the group survival rafts too.

Students had to be calm and composed whilst under pressure and help each other to learn what they had to do. Only the first student was shown how to bail water from the raft, the rest had to pass on the information to their peers and learn to depend on one another.

One of the students was then selected to be the leader in a task which involved the entire group being rescued into a large survival raft. Both the team members and the leader had to really step out of their comfort zone in order to achieve the difficult task. Needless to say, the students surprised both themselves and the RAF staff with how well they did with the challenge and the positive way in which they took on the task.

Katherine Potter, Careers Coordinator at Downham Market Academy said that the students were all totally engaged for the whole session and realised how lucky they were to be able to participate.