What bar? Standards? Standards are fine, individual instructors not following standards is the problem.
The biggest problem I see is when instructors do not make students meet the standard for "mastery learning".
mastery learning is defined as performing the skill so it meets the stated performance requirements in a reasonably comfortable, fluid, repeatable manner as would be expected of a diver at that certification level.”
Oh that's easy. And I'm stating all of this for most, but not all, WRSTC members, not just PADI, as I see this as an industry problem, not a PADI one. They are no more guilty than the others in this regard.
For one, I'd like to see a change for a greater focus on weight distribution in IDCs so that students are effortlessly trimmed. I guarantee that the deceased wasn't trimmed at all.
Second, all instructor candidates must perform all confined and open water skills neutrally buoyant and trimmed first in confined water and then open water. So yes, underwater scuba kit removal and replacement in open water. Instructors who have their IDCs in warm water locations must have an IE in cold water as they are so incredibly different.
Third, address the reason why standards are not followed. When i first started teaching opem water students in wetsuits, I admittely made them suffer with pre dive weight checks. I failed to manage their comfort to get all skills completed at an appropriate level. I'll admit my retention rate was poor at this time (but better than when I taught on the knees).
If you observe open water courses in my area, you'll see basically no one doing pre dive weight checks. Now you can say "they are violating standards", which is true. But it doesn't address the conditions (cold water) that cause this standards violation.
When i figured out other methods where I'd be off by a maximum of two lbs (checked at the end of OW1 at the safety stop with emptying the BCD - I've blogged about this to share with others), my retention rate shot up. Yes, I violated standards by skipping the pre-dive weight check, but I had a fairly close weight determination before my students went into the water. This was confirmed by the fact that I never took off more than two pounds off a student after OW1.
So to make a long story short, figure out how to teach approximate weighting for cold water divers before putting students in the water.
Fourth, ban students from being placed on their knees for the reasons that it ingrains bad habits initially, and in the case of cold water, they get cold faster. The more active they are, the warmer they will remain.
As a final statement, I would have to be completely out of my mind to think that any of these, other than instructor candidates having to perform skills NB/T - I just won't live long enough to see it most likely, will ever happen.
The thing is, none of this is all that hard.
You believe the standards are fine. I don't for most agencies.
But there's a thread on this already that is currently active (something like "if you could change one thing..."
