A swim school website built around levels, pools and the waiting list

Levels a parent can place their child in

Level names that mean something to your teachers ("Stage 3", "Dolphins") mean nothing to a new parent. Describe each level by what the child can already do and what they'll learn next, so parents can place them without a phone call:

Parent and baby

From a few months old, with a parent in the water. Water confidence and songs, not strokes.

Beginners

Can't yet swim unaided. Floating, kicking with a float, getting their face wet.

Improvers

Can swim a few metres on front and back. Building distance and starting proper strokes.

Stroke development

Swims a length. Technique for front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke, treading water.

Advanced and fitness

Confident over longer distances. Butterfly, turns, stamina, and a route into a club.

Adults

Separate lessons for nervous adult beginners and stroke improvement, at adult-only times.

If you follow a national teaching framework or award scheme, name it and map your levels to it, since parents moving from another school will ask.

Pools, days and times

Many swim schools hire time at several pools. Give each pool a page with the address, parking, changing arrangements (family cubicles, poolside viewing area), water temperature if it's a warm teaching pool, and its lesson timetable by level. A pools CMS collection and a lessons collection with level, pool, day and time keep this in one place, and the office can mark a time slot full from the dashboard.

Enrolment and the waiting list

Swimming lessons run as small groups for a term, so places are allocated rather than booked. Anticode's booking calendar takes one booking per slot and isn't built for a class of six, so use an enrolment form instead. The standard contact form only has name, email and message; an enrolment form with the fields a swim school needs is a custom form tied to a site function (up to 30 plain-text fields), or an app build if you want choices and tick boxes:

• Swimmer's first name and date of birth.
• Current ability, as a choice of the level descriptions above.
• Preferred pools and days, as tick boxes.
• Parent's name, phone and email.
• Any medical or additional needs the teacher should know, kept brief.

Submissions land in your Anticode inbox, sealed at rest, and a form connector can copy each one into a Google Sheet or Airtable base that becomes your waiting list. Each submission is sent once, so check the dashboard if a row seems to be missing. Tell families honestly how waiting lists work: by date of request, by level, siblings first, and roughly when places open (usually at the start of a term).

Term fees

Publish what a term costs per lesson length, how many weeks it includes, sibling discounts and what happens with missed lessons or pool closures. When you offer a place, send a payment link from Stripe, PayPal or another provider for that term's fee, or a subscription link if you charge monthly. Payment links aren't connected to the enrolment, so you mark each swimmer as paid yourself.

Safety and teacher qualifications

Parents notice these details even when they don't ask. State your teachers' swimming teaching qualifications, the ratio of swimmers to teacher at each level, who provides lifeguard cover at each pool, background checks for staff working with children, and your safeguarding policy with the named lead. Explain the poolside rules for parents, such as where they can watch and the photography policy. This information sits well on an "About our lessons" page linked from every level.

Why the fit is partial, and what to pair

Anticode handles the public side well: level descriptions, pool timetables, enrolment requests and fees. It doesn't run lesson registers, progress records, automatic term re-enrolment, make-up lesson credits or parent accounts, and published sites have no logins. Schools with several hundred swimmers usually use a swim school management system; link Enrol to its sign-up page once you've moved over, and keep Anticode as the public site. Related: summer camps, dance studios and surf schools.

To build it, describe the school in a sentence, such as "a swim school in Leicester running lessons at three pools for babies to advanced, with a waiting list". Playful (Fredoka) suits a children's school; teal or blue action colours fit naturally. Because the enrolment form collects children's details, Anticode requires two-factor sign-in for the account owner and the person publishing before the site goes live.

Limits

• No lane registers, progress tracking or parent logins.
• No class capacity counts on bookings; enrolment by form.
• Fees by payment link, reconciled by hand.
• No file uploads for medical letters or certificates.

Questions people ask

Can parents book swimming lessons directly?

Group lessons work better as an enrolment request you confirm. The booking calendar suits one-to-one lessons, one booking per slot.

How do I run a waiting list on a swim school website?

Use a custom or app-built enrolment form and send each submission to a Google Sheet or Airtable through a connector, sorted by date and level.

Can I take term fees online?

Yes, with a payment link from your own provider. You match payments to swimmers yourself.