INTRODUCTION Swimming is one of the compulsory courses in the joint honours study programme "Physical Education and Coaching" at both Bachelor and Master degrees. The aim of the Swimming 1 course is to learn and practice the correct technique of the front crawl stroke and breaststroke and to master basic starts and turns of these swimming techniques. The main criteria required to obtain credits for completing this subject include mastering the correct technique as well as swimming 50 metres front crawl and 100 metres breaststroke in given time limits. Monitoring of swimming competence in pupils at elementary schools, students at secondary schools and university students provides us with information on the actual efficiency of teaching swimming. Application requirements for students of physical education and sport continually keep getting less strict. Future students can pursue their admission process even if they do not score any points in swimming. It is sufficient if they can swim 100 m swimming stroke without a pause. New students often enter the compulsory course "Swimming" with incorrect movement habits and wrong swimming technique. In such cases, the correction of errors is difficult and their elimination during the course is not always successful. Constant decrease of performance level and the quality of swimming technique of applicants have been researched by numerous university teachers (Bence, 2010; Bence – Mandzáková, 2006; Chebeň, 2010; Kalečík – Benčúriková, 2011; Macejková, 1996). Mandzák, 2010, Mandzáková, 2012; Popelka, 2010 and Tonhauserová – Mandzák, 2010 observed the swimming technique of university students in the long run. Swimming technique assessment in terms of quality and efficiency of stroke execution and swimming performance provides us with feedback on efficiency of education. Identifying the most common errors in students’ technique can provide a better understanding of the causes of error adoption and within teaching apply appropriate exercises to correct identified deficiencies. Our study is focused on the front crawl stroke. At the beginning of the research we used diagnostic methods to identify the level of mastering the swimming techniques by students in their first year of university studies. At first, the students took a one–semester course "Swimming 1", and then they took a selective course focused on the improvement of their swimming techniques. Corrective swimming programme constituted a part of both courses. The traditional course was enriched by a system of effective exercises aimed at the correction of the wrong technique. During the output testing, we determined the effectiveness of this programme in terms of changes in quality indicators of the front crawl technique. Apart from the main objective, we also partially aimed at determining the direct relationship between the level of technique and its effectiveness in terms of performance in 100 m front crawl standard discipline.