I think you could achieve your goals of training people well by simply training anyone who meets the qualification of the agency under which you're training, no matter what their long-term goals, but teach them all the extra non-required skills you like, testing them in those skills as you please.
This sort of thing has been hotly debated on the forum. A few points I recall from that:
1.) Some agencies (PADI being one) are said to basically mandate certification if a student passes the knowledge test and can do the skills, even if the instructor doesn't think he's 'ready.'
2.) The instructor can't add additional requirements and make demonstrating mastery of those a requirement of certification.
3.) Some instructors believe students should be trained to handle local conditions, and shouldn't get an OW cert. card unless and until they can. So, the student in a region of the U.S. with difficult entry/exit ocean shore diving conditions and chilly water with poor viz. would in theory face a different course from a student in Bonaire doing typically 'easy' shore dives in high viz, low current, warm water and predictable conditions (e.g.: not worried much about the tides).
So, if Jim taught for PADI, and a student managed to pass the written test and do all the PADI-required skills in a local quarry with good viz. & no current, but didn't do/learn the extra stuff Jim wanted to include, and Jim thought he was, to be blunt, a lousy diver and an accident-waiting-to-happen, Jim would in theory have to fork over a PADI OW card with Jim's name on it.
With SEI, Jim doesn't have to do that, and some Rescue skills are included in the basic OW class.
Whether and to what extent the basic OW courses of the mainstream agencies (e.g.: PADI, SSI, SDI, Naui) adequately prepare people for the status of an OW cert. is a subject for other threads. But I've tried to represent the issue faithfully here.
As to agencies that might interest you as a recreational diver, you may at some point get interested in the DIR system of diving, with a course such as GUE Fundamentals. Think emphasis on team diving, critically considered gear configuration and a strong emphasis on high quality personal dive skills, wrapped into a course that's pretty challenging, if all I've read about it is true (I haven't taken it).
Richard.
