Children on Matakana Island will be enjoying the water with freshly-learned swimming skills this summer thanks to lessons in a portable pool seeing them hugely increase their aqua abilities in two months.

Fifty of the island's youngsters have been taking part in the Kia Maanu, Kia Ora – Stay Afloat, Stay Alive – campaign, which has seen an ActivePost portable pool set up on the island for a school term.

The community from Matakana Island can safely make the most of their pristine coastline.

Professional swimming lessons and survival skills were taught to 50 children in the 10 metres long and five metres wide pool, which is travelling nationwide to help communities and school children how to swim.

With the pool arriving at the island in October – and set to leave next Thursday, December 19 – ActivePost spokesperson Nicola Airey says the swimming ability of the island's children has improved significantly.

'Before the lessons began, fewer than half of the school's children could swim five metres, one-quarter could get to 15 metres; and only about 15 per cent could swim 25 metres,” says Nicola.

'Now the number who can swim five metres has more than doubled, 70 per cent can achieve 15 metres [well above the national average of 58 per cent] – and four out of 10 can reach 25 metres.”

'The number who can swim 100 metres has increased three-fold, and eight per cent can now swim 200 metres, a benchmark called ‘swim to survive'.”

Many of the island's 250 residents have also been learning important survival skills as part of the campaign, which is a joint initiative by Water Safety New Zealand and New Zealand Post to give Maori the skills to educate whanau and iwi about water safety.

Water Safety New Zealand chief executive Matt Claridge says the portable pool plays an important role towards reducing the high number of Maori drowning in New Zealand.

'Maori are consistently over-represented in our drowning statistics,” says Matt. 'Initiatives such as this, where water safety skills are taught in a safe environment, are crucial to bringing the high national Maori drowning toll down.”

The island has a fun beach day on Tuesday, to celebrate the pool's success on Matakana. 'The Fun Day is about helping this unique community get back to the island's beaches safer and more able to have a great time together enjoying the sea.”

Staff at Matakana Island Primary School also got involved with the day, with principal Erin Paki saying it is great to see the children put their skills to the test in the open water.

'They all got to try surfing as well, some for the first time,” says Erin. 'Some of them picked it up real easy.”

Erin says it is also impressive to see how far they've all come – and see their confidence levels boosted.

The pool leaves Matakana Island on Thursday, December 19. Its next destination is Lake Karapiro, in the Waikato, where it will be based at the Waka Ama National Championships. It will then go into a rural Waikato school.