It's partially because if you can teach them those skills you can probably also teach them to swim full stop. A big difficulty with that is most schools would also have to travel to get access to a pool. I've only gone to one school before college that had a pool and it was a charter school on a local college campus so they had access to that pool, some schools might have to travel 30m-1h to get to a pool if they're in a rural area.

When I was a kid in the 70's in rural California, we were bussed almost an hour to a bigger school for mandatory swimming lessons. I don't remember at what age but it was elementary school, I think maybe 5th-6th grade. Several grades were grouped together.

Most (all?) of us could already "swim" basically, since there were lakes and rivers near the small towns and kids usually got free swimming lessons around age 5. The bigger lessons were about the various (then) standard strokes, pool safety and basic lifesaving, how not to accidentally kill yourself on a diving board, swimming laps instead of just swimming around, etc.

I absolutely hated it (too many strangers, why didn't we have our own pool, my endurance was crappy, I was afraid of the deep) -- but I'm glad they made us do it instead of letting us wimp out.

I think it's something schools should do but the logistics of doing it is difficult. You don't want to do it for a whole gym class and you want more instructors available than schools have staff to provide so they have to work with some other group to get enough people to work individually with the kids.

There is of course education that can help in a lot of these situations. What amazes me is that there is no one around these kids to look for them apart from the pool staff.

Most pools here allow for non/bad swimmers to go where they want, with what they...under the absolute condition to have a good swimmer with them, all the time.

A small kid straying alone in the pool is already an alert and the pool staff will get the kid out of the water on the spot, with no reentry. Here the kids are big enough that they could be swimming by themselves, so for me the blame is on the parents for not being there, even if it was for just a minute.

I would expect so as well.

Most Wave pools are at resorts/water parks which typically do not necessarily even employ fully trained/high skill lifeguards.

They often rely on private certification programs that will train "shallow water lifeguards" who do not have to have a full set of swimming & rescue skills. They do tend to have good training for spinal injuries though.

Add in that these resorts are most attractive to non-swimmers and they are hopelessly crowded and it is a dangerous mix.

Places like Great Wolf Lodge scare the daylights out of me as a former lifeguard/WSI.