Good question, actually!

I was educated through Catholic institutions in inner-Melbourne, and vividly remember taking swim classes in primary school. I’m sure they handed out some form of certificate of completion, but those would have probably been just a Xerox copy and nothing accredited or formal.

Similar to you, most of my ability to swim came from summers at the local public pool or beaches.

We also had the same competitive swim carnivals in high-school; and it was just taken at face value that every student could swim (and they could).

We also had some swim-focused PE classes if I remember correctly, but I could also be confusing them with swim club as it was so long ago.

Long story short, I don’t actually know how they actually track this metric either - but it does seem a bit wishy-washy, ‘ey?