In October 2022, we launched the RLSS UK National Lifesaving Academy. It replaced Survive & Save as our senior lifesaving award programme and is one of the key ways we reach teenagers to talk about water safety. Our lifesaving community has overwhelmingly embraced the changes. We have seen many of our Lifesaving Instructors update to the new instructor awards and begin running National Lifesaving Academy sessions in their clubs and leisure facilities.

The Instructor, Tutor, and Mentor awards required an overhaul in line with the new National Lifesaving Academy awards, and we are finally ready to launch in the first week of April 2023. These new awards will mean new instructors and tutors can qualify without undertaking the old Survive & Save-based course before updating to the new awards through their RLSS UK Account (powered by tahdah).

---

Lifesaving Academy Instructor

The new Lifesaving Academy Instructor award allows a new instructor to undertake a face-to-face course over approximately 16 hours, giving them the tools they need to train and assess the National Lifesaving Academy awards.

Instructors will cover a wide range of topics, including:

• Lesson planning
• Teaching and assessing lifesaving and life support classes
• Class management
• Swimming pool health and safety
• Safeguarding
• Equality and diversity

They will have time during the course to practice their teaching skills with candidates in the water and will have the opportunity to make sure that their life support skills are up to scratch and standardised.

The Lifesaving Academy Instructor award allows instructors to train and assess National Lifesaving Academy awards, Life Support 3, and the Save a Life set of community awards. It has a physical pack containing the Lifesaving Academy Instructor workbook, information on safeguarding, a handy double clipboard for training and assessing on the poolside, and an RLSS UK bag to keep all your training resources together.

We are also launching our digital Instructor Resource, which will appear in the National Lifesaving Academy folder in your RLSS UK Account (powered by tahdah). It contains information on correcting National Lifesaving Academy candidates’ techniques when encountering problems, games, and activities to help your candidates learn.

---

Lifesaving Academy Tutor

The new Lifesaving Academy Tutor award allows a Lifesaving Academy Instructor to upskill to become a Tutor. It is a face-to-face course that any Lifesaving Academy Mentor can run.

The Lifesaving Academy Tutor award allows instructors to train and assess the Lifesaving Academy Instructor award, the Rookie Instructor award, the Assistant Instructor award, the Community Instructor award, the National Lifesaving Academy awards, Life Support 3, and the Save a Life series of community awards.

Tutors will cover topics relating to:

• The importance of standardisation for Life Support
• Training the trainer
• Equality and diversity
• Planning and delivering Lifesaving Academy Instructor courses
• Planning and delivering Rookie Instructor, Assistant Instructor, and Community Instructor courses

The Lifesaving Academy Tutor resources are digital only; there is no physical candidate pack. This has enabled us to offer the course at a lower cost and means that the resources are always up to date and can be quickly reviewed if there are changes in our allied courses. Not printing, storing, and sending out documents that can be accessed digitally will also help us meet our environmental targets as we look to reduce our impact on the environment and improve sustainability.

---

Lifesaving Academy Mentor

The most significant change we are making to our lifesaving instructor awards programme is opening the Mentor award to all Lifesaving Academy Tutors for the first time. Lifesaving Academy Mentors will be able to run Lifesaving Academy Tutor courses and all the awards that Instructors and Tutors can run.

Lifesaving Academy Mentor will run similarly to our Trainer Assessor Mentor courses. The course will be online, and new Mentors will spend a day with our training team learning about how to run the Tutor course and best practices in mentorship.

We hope that accessing the Mentor level of award will encourage branches and clubs to become training hubs for new instructors and help clubs build partnerships with local leisure operators by offering opportunities to train their staff.

The first Mentor courses will be running later in the year by the RLSS UK training team, who already have much experience training new mentors. We’ll be releasing information about the prerequisites, dates, and costs closer to the time.

---

Running an Instructor or Tutor Course

The Lifesaving Academy Instructor and Lifesaving Academy Tutor courses are now available through your RLSS UK Account (powered by tahdah). Credits can be pre-purchased as with our other courses, and the physical packs for the Instructor course will be dispatched to you.

The old Lifesaving Instructor and Lifesaving Instructor Tutor courses have now been discontinued and can no longer be run.

If you still need to complete your online update to your Lifesaving Instructor, Tutor, or Mentor award, you must do this before you can deliver or assess any of the National Lifesaving Academy awards. The update availability will finish at the end of December 2023, and you will need to have updated before then to keep your teaching award in date. To take the update, you must be in current membership and navigate to the ‘Online Learning’ section of your account.

---

He's an overview of the new NLA instructor pathway 

Award	Who can currently deliver	How can I qualify
Lifesaving Academy Instructor	Lifesaving Academy Tutors	If eligible you can now complete the NLA update in your RLSS UK Account (powered by tahdah). If you currently don’t hold any instructor or trainer qualifications with RLSS UK then you can attend a Lifesaving Academy Instructor Course.
Lifesaving Academy Tutor	Lifesaving Academy Mentors	Attend a Lifesaving Academy Tutor Course
Lifesaving Academy Mentor	RLSS UK Training Team	Attend a Lifesaving Academy Mentor Course