Padi/ Bsac

[Phish-phood]

I've made the point befpre that I think the agency needs to hold it head up and take a lot more responsibilty for the quality of divers that are coming out of their system.

Having only dived the PADI system it is the only one I can comment on.

Yes they are in it for the money but I can't see why that must always lead to a decline in quality and safety. The agency is the oe who sets the standards and is therefore the one that is ultimately responsible for ensuring standards are kept. I've said before that PADI's main problem is that they do not come down hard enough on instructors/dm's who are breaking standards or not up to scratch as divers.

If a diver is apalling in the water then they should not be signed off full stop! If on an IDC a candidate is not up to scratch then they should not be allowed proceed to the IE and it is my understanding that this was in fact the reason for the IDC. Why is PADI not clamping down on Instuctors trainer, course directors etc who are allowing these people 'slip through the system'
Rubbish begets rubbish. A bad instructor trains a group of divers up to DM. One instructor has no trained six bad DM's who go on to the IDC/IE and 'slip through the system' you know have six more bad instructors. By right these divers should have been caught in the early stages of their training and forced to improve but it isn't always that easy however there is no excuse whatsoever for a rubbish diver to be making it through IDC/IE to become a rubbish instructor and start the whole cycle over again. The agenccy should be evaluating IDC/IE courses on a regular basis and when they see divers who are not up to scratch they should be using that info and going back to the instructor that trained them to determine whether it is a diver problem or an instructor problem. The wost case scenario and I am sure it probably has already occurred is that a bad instructor manages to make it through to bad course director and they are then judging everyone by their standards and so the overall standard goes down another notch. The way I see it - instructors, dive centres etc. will push the limits because they know they can and unless the agency does something to prove that they won't stand for sub-standard teaching it will only get worse.

 

[bermudaskink]

For Sheck 33:

OK - so you have every right not to agree with me, however, I don't think that some instructors do have as much choice as you make out. Also I would like to point out that I am not saying they have excuses to breach standards - just that the quality of teaching gets affected. I am not saying that as a result someone will have an accident in the water becasue of this and that is OK and not their fault.... I am NOT saying that. I am saying that due to the pressures of commercial dive centres there will be some open water students that end up needing a little more experience and help in the water after certification than if they had been trained by someone who had less students to deal with and less hours to work.....I am just talking about small things, like boyancy, mask clearing skills, confidence levels. If they aren't up to scratch I am saying that it could quite possiblty be the dive centre’s fault rather than the instructors themselves or the agency. :doctor:

Instructors may move somewhere to teach thinking that their dive centre is a good one that doesn't put pressure on their instructors but more often than not, they do. In a perfect world it wouldn't happen. But saying that when it does happen, all instructors should throw in the towel is not a great suggestion. If they all did that - the dive industry would fall apart - instructors would be jobless all over the place. It's OK when you have a large number of dive centers to work for but in many places, you might end up getting really stuck for options and that isn't your own choice. You end up with a terrible boss, and there's nowhere else to go and earn any money. I think that is like the tree cutting villager. ut:

This is another reason why I hope to keep teaching independently. I don't want to get in the situation where a dive center is making me do things I wouldn't normally do. However, I have the fortune of not having to rely on my teaching for my income. When instructors choose to teach for their career and it becomes their sole source of income - it's not their fault that the dive center they work for turns out not to be as good as they thought and they are left with the option of putting up with it or getting fired. But remember I am not saying that this gives them any excuse to breach saftey standards. Though some do that and they need to be suspended or have their licence revoked!

I have met so many instructors that say they are having a hard time working for this or that dive centre but they can't do anything about it because they need the money and there is nowhere else to work.

Also I would urge you to write to PADI if you have any complaints. Wouldn't that be more constructive? They want to hear what you think so they can improve or clarify a situation. You weren't happy with PADI classes because you didn't like the way things were done? Who's fault was that? Why are you blaming PADI and why did you not write or call them up and tell them why you thought things were wrong?

PADI is not perfect. But they update and correct things all the time. If people are using PADI courses and going about teaching them badly that is not PADI's fault.

 

[Phish-phood]

I know of several complaints having been made against an instructor all of a safety and standards nature and nothing has been done. This was exactly my point about instructors being able to push the limits and get away with far more than they should.

 

[bermudaskink]

Need to clarify what I meant by slipping through the system. There are instructors and instructor trainers that are very bad - and they need to get fired! I agree with you. There are DMs and instructors that need to be repremanaded for their poor teaching and conduct. It's not because they have been trained by PADI though. They can be representing any agency.

You get this grey area of instructors and IDC instructors and examiners, where after all the requirements are met and the exams have been passed - there is a certain level of personal judgement. Some examiners will let you get away with certain things, some wont. You can still meet all the requirements and have passed all the tests (for any agency - like I said before I have observed this for BSAC and NAUI and PADI) and end up being a bit of a nightmare. Not unsafe, but you know the type I am talking about. The kind that make many mild mistakes, but not dangerous ones. No skill tests and exams can get rif of these types unfortunately.

So, at the end of the day. The agency can only go so far to make sure all divers reach a certain skill level. There are some divers who can do the skills in a round about way and scrape through but screw up later on. I was just trying to run through all the possible reasons for why you see novice divers who aren't as skilled as others and why agencies are not really to blame. I honestly can't see a way how an agency can have any more control. Have you got any suggestions?

I am not saying it is fine for a nightmare instructor to teach his or her students below the standards. It's not! What I was pointing out is that it is not the agencies' fault. If someone has slipped through the system - and is witnessed teaching poorly they need to be reported. That's what QA is for. If people are not reporting bad DMs or instructors, then PADI wont know about them. I disagree that PADI are not doing enough to control the quality of their members. If they here about any standards being broken they investigate it and take whatever actions are needed. I have not witnessed anyone not being dealt with when they have been reported teaching in an unsafe manner. Yes, money is important to PADI but in the same respect so is their reputation for safety!

I really disagree that PADI as a provider of standards and teaching materials are to blame for poor instruction.

I think the problem is that not enough people are reporting these things to PADI or other agencies. Most divers are PADI divers, therefore most bad divers will also be PADI - assuming all other things are the same....

That's why you see so many bad PADI divers.

 

[bermudaskink]

Just read your reply there..... that is sh** that they never did anything! I am shocked to hear that. I would be interested to know more details. Was there not enough evidence? PADI do expell and suspend quite few folk each year, so I am not sure why they would ignore a case that you obviously thought was important. :wacko:

Did you write and complain?

I wonder though - how often does this happen with other agencies?

 

[DrSteve]

Bermuda - by way of clarification. BSAC, as we have agreed is geared to dealing with the quite unpleasant diving in the North Sea. Cold, fairly big currents, no vis etc., You also commented that PADI is a better system suited for the tropics. Did you take any BSAC classes or were you able to cross-over based on "acquired prior learning." If you took some classes with BSAC were they geared towards local diving? e.g. how much detail did they go into regarding dry suits or hypothermia? Did you learn anything from BSAC which you hadn't already been taught through PADI? I'm guessing you did, I remember having to work out air consumption by hand for a dive plan, easy for me as a chemist, but for others not trained in levels beyond secondary school it was much harder.

 

[Phish-phood]

Like I said I can only comment on PADI as that is the agency I dive through however I have no doubt that similar things go on in other agencies.

Although I would rather not go into to details regarding the situation as it is long and complicated. Put simply the complaints to PADI were along the lines of a single instructor and on one occasion a DM taking up to 18 OW students in the pool. No first aid kit or oxygen available during pool sessions and unqualified/trainee DM's in the open water with students.
There were various other complications and issues with the whole thing which make it even more of a problem but the above in my book should have been enough to warrent a suspension. AFAIK all it warrented was a phone call to say don't do that again and it was back to normal a week later.

 

[MikeFerrara]

bermudaskink once bubbled...
Firstly - where do people get off telling me what I say is "BS". Didn't know people who dive so much could be so aggressive.
:wacko:

For Sheck33, Mike Ferrara and DrSteve:

To clarify the "dive centers force instructors to teach badly" statement. I didn't say this was absolutely OK for instructors to go along with it but to a certain extent - instructors who rely on teaching for their entire income often don't have the choice. You can only get fired from so many dive centers. I don't teach diving to make money. I teach PADI courses to friends and relatives at the moment as a hobby and I charge cost price (they only pay for the manual, an RDP table and the cert card). But if I imagine myself working out here for one the 4 dive centers on the island and my boss is telling me I need to work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, with few breaks, gives me maximum number of students when the conditions are a little dodgy and I'd rather take less - there's only so many times I can get get a new job!! For non-natives, work permits are very hard to get hold of and once you have one, it’s pretty hard to complain against your employer. I assume this is the case for many instructors working in foreign countries, especially those countries where the rights of over seas workers are not considered a high priority.

I've spoken to dive instructors who have suffered from dive centers, that while following safety standards, may push instructors so far that they can't give 100% and end up certifying students that haven't had the benefit of better tuition and closer attention. It's hard to criticise the employee when they are trying hard to make a living and their employer is telling them what to do and they don't want to get fired.

It's not so easy to be the best instructor you can be when you've got a money driven boss breathing down your neck.

That was my point. I wasn't saying that instructors can blame their employers for all their mistakes.

I'm glad I teach independently and if I do turn to teaching through a center to bring in earnings for me I hope I will stick to my guns and not let a dive centre walk all over my teaching credibility.

But to make an analogy of my point...

It's too easy for us to blame Brazilians for chopping down the rainforest, but it's difficult to go up to a poverty stricken villager and tell them not to cut down that tree when there is nothing else around to make him any money to feed his family.

I've talked to many instructors who feel that their teaching quality has suffered because they have been overloaded with students. Even though they haven't broken any agency standards, they feel like they were not able to teach to their best ability. You're right, instructors shouldn't give into dive centers in a perfect world but the bottom line is - most of them who need to money - do give in. Can you really blame them?

That's how I ended up owning a dive shop. I won't teach for any dive shop that I know of.

Also, while it may be true for some dive centers - that equipment sales make all the money - that is not true for most dive centers I have been to. In Bermuda for example - they charge $400 for an open water course and they don't sell much in the way of equipment. They do a lot of Discover Scuba Diving courses and instructor and Divemaster led dives and make a lot of money from those in addition to the other courses. This was also what I have observed for dive centres in Egypt, the Maldives and the Dominican Republic. In Australia however, I saw a lot more equipment for sale though.

In order to teach an Open Water Course - all a dive centre needs to purchase from PADI is a manual, an RDP table and a cert card. Comes to a grand total of $41 (if a centre is ordering in bulk of at least 100 manuals and tables etc.) It's “BS” that a centre has to pay $50 for a crew pak. In bulk OW crew paks cost just over half of that price you plucked out of thin air (and to order a single pak from PADI costs just over $40), but my total above to see a student right through includes the $13.80 certification cost and doesn’t involve buying a crew pak which students don’t have to buy if they don’t want to. So, if a center charges $400 per person. You take off $41 it gives to PADI and that’s $359. You can have up to 8 students being taught by one instructor in Open Water – 10 students in confined water – you do you Maths – you consider how much the instructor might get and how much in boat fuel and other expenses you need to add on. But after 10 students hand you each their $400, and you subtract what you had to give to PADI, there’s a lot of money to be made by the dive centre there!!

Since I owned a dive shop for 3 1/2 years, I have certainly done the math and you left out some things like pool rental, the cost of rental equipment, shop rent, shop insurance, instructor insurance, compressor maintenance, air testing, advertising, untilities, travel costs, DM costs and more. When I calculated the cost of doing an OW class I allocated only a portion of fixed burdens to training based on the percentage of gross sales that were from training. With all the overhead accounted for I LOST over $100 per OW student. I had to sell some masks and fins just to break even. Oh and BTW, I never figured in any pay for me the instructor, only costs.

And with regards to the video only having to be purchased from PADI once. You can either lend a student a video so they can watch it in their spare time, however usually students watch the video in class. Yet you say that is a waste of class time!
There are various reasons for watching a video in class. 1) How many people take a multi regional VCR away with them on holiday? 2) It's nice to be able to stop the tape and answer any questions for students. 3) You can make sure your students are actually watching it - esp. if you are teaching teenagers or kids - it's not a great idea to have them take it home and give it back the next day and tell you they watched it and then you have to spend ages going over basic things the video covered when they get a load of knowledge reviews wrong.

My student aren't here on Holiday. They live here. They're required to come to class prepared. That means having read the book, watched the videos and completed the knowledge reviews. Each student (household) gets a video.

 

[Custer]

bermudaskink once bubbled...
Ooops - this was meant to be a reply to other threads about agencies...
but I can't move it now...
____________________________________________________
I am a PADI Instructor and I just want to add a few points:

1) Most recreational diving takes place in tropical waters

2) Nobody wanting to dive in these waters needs to spend several months in a swimming pool first.

3) I agree that diving in the UK may require a certain degree of skill that some PADI Open Water diviers may not have. However, people are responsible for themselves and should dive within their own limitations. If they don't, it's not PADI'd fault!

4) I hate all this agency bashing. At the end of the day it's just stupid competativeness and I would like to remind anoyne who likes to bash agencies that one of the most loved aspects of this sport is that it is NON COMPETATIVE!

It is very hard to regulate the quality of instructors but that is what PADI Quality Assurance does. If anyone does witness poor instruction they should report it (the same goes for any other agency)!! This is far more constructive than slating the agency on a website because of a few poor representatives.

5) PADI makes money from selling teaching materials. Get over it! These teaching materials are brilliant and they come in a variety of styles - books, DVDs, CD - ROMS, quizzes, lesson guides. I don't believe BSAC supplies such a diversity of materials but they offer a different type of course, where you have to attend lectures and many scheduled confined water sessions. It's cheaper and if you choose BSAC to learn diving you'll be expected to teach or help out later on for nothing. This is the major difference. The way the courses are structured. It doesn't mean one is better than the other. It also depends on what you want out of a scuba certification. If you want to go to the Cayman Islands and dive and that's all you want to do and you only have 2 weeks to learn to dive before you go on holiday I would harldy recommend you learn through BSAC. But if you live in the UK and are interested in taking up a hobby and joining a club and learning to dive in local conditions and have plenty of time and not very much money then take the BSAC path.

6) Dive centres arethe ones who make most of the money from certifying divers. All the dive centre has to do is buy a manual from PADI ($15 aprox), the videos (only have to but them once), the certification card ($13), and pay an instructor (not a lot!). To run a course costs a dive centre almost nothing. The instructors often don't get a fair cut in the profits. If anyone is going to slate PADI for money making then they should really focus on the dive centre owners because they are the ones raking it in. Dive Centres also force PADI instructors to dive more than they should, take the maximum number of students when they shouldn't and often overload instructors to the point where their quality of teaching is affected. Again. not the agency's fault nor the instructors.

7) If a diver or an intstructor are "poor" divers or teachers that is not the certification agency's fault. At the end of the day it depends on individuals and their experience and what they have learned (good and bad habits) along the way. Poor divers can slip through the standards and pass all the courses of any agency and still end up being appauling in the water! PADI or BSAC or whatever. For any agency, it is impossible to not certify a diver if they pass all the requirements but still end up being a general nightmare in the water! There is no criteria for not certifying a "potential diving hazard" if they have passed all requirements but make you feel like they shouldn't really dive. That's why you end up with these certified divers who can't really dive without a great deal of assistance (even Rescue Divers or Dive Leaders!). But who's fault is that? You can't tell someone that they can't dive because they just suck! You can warn them, and advise them on how to be better and you can refuse to take them out on your boat, but at the end of the day you can't control what they do. It's just a shame that some of us will have to put up with them or even rescue them. But on the good side - they keep us alert and remind us how NOT to dive!!

8) I took my PADI IDC (instructor course) last year and we had PADI dive masters and BSAC crossovers taking the course. Some of the performances I witnessed were horendous! Yet, they still qualified as instructors. One of the course attendants was already a BSAC instructor and his demonstration skills, equipment maintainance, and overall awareness of diving was appauling but he managed to scrape through. But I have also met PADI instructors who are equally worrying. Again, it's not the agency who is to blame. It is individuals or dive centres that need to take the blame and you need to report it so something can be done about it!

Stay Safe
Dive Happy

Excellent points, excellent post.

The vast majority of U.S. divers would have no interest in the extended regimine of BSAC.

And in the U.S., such a program would be vastly expensive, as no one would do it for free.

 

[Custer]

MikeFerrara once bubbled...

The basic skills required to dive well are the same for all waters.


The basic skills to dive well as the same for all waters.

But not the basic skills to dive.