It's a long held belief of mine, that each course would have an exit requirement with regard to certain skills - say buoyancy with ever increasing standards
I think that for DM there should be an entry test of skills - to include the swim tests before you can start on the course - although I appreciate that impacts those doing the course on vacation with limited time.
I spend an awful lot of time on students in the pool getting them up to working level of skills, kicks and buoyancy, time which could be better spent refining them and giving them more experience in other stuff. They will get more learning experiences diving alongside real customers making real errors then they would in the same time pootling around a reef
In some ways PADI are held to higher standards -- of their own making. The DM course sort of has two target customers: it's the PADI entrance exam, required to work 'for' them, AI, Instructor, ++. These people are basically signing up to work for a dive shop to learn the ropes and eventually become a DM once they're past the basic skill levels.
The other target are people who are doing it as an amateur to improve their skills. These people shouldn't be able to get through what is purported to be high skilled training in a simple vacation week.
I'll illustrate this with Fundies... If you rock up to "do" GUE Fundamentals you will be measured by their absolute standards for your skills. You won't be passed unless you meet those standards. If you're early in your diving career (as was my case), you will be expected to go away and practice those skills and be assessed at a later date. Learning those skills is difficult; however, once learned, life's much easier.
To be honest, most courses are like this -- if you're not up to the standard, you're often pushed back. The difference with Fundies is that the skill levels are strictly enforced. This higher level of skills should be required on an "advanced" course such as Dive Master, i.e. no easy passes.
Edit:
Course standards vary according to the levels. The entry-level courses OW, AOW allow a wide variation in standards and, to be blunt, some poorly skilled people are let through because they're expected to be doing "follow the dive leader" type dives in holiday locations. (For people diving in difficult conditions - lakes, UK, cold tidal green waters - their training's likely to be
much much harder than those in benign warm-waters) But the point stands; as long as you're not completely incapable or dangerous, you'll pass.
For more advanced courses, the standards required to pass increase considerably. Are PADI's DiveMaster course standards for basic skills high enough?
