SSI or PADI?

 

Lets explain the difference between SSI or PADI?
SSI stands for “Scuba Schools International”

PADI stands for “Professional Association of Diving Instructors”

 

Explaining what the diving education organisation SSI or PADI do:

Both diving organisations are worldwide the leading diving education systems for recreational diving. But they are not the only ones. For example BSAC (British Sub-Aqua Club), Naui ( National Association of Underwater Instructors) and CMAS ( Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques ). Most of this diving organisations exist since many years already. SSI and PADI have been the first ones and operate since more than 40 year now. SSI and PADI certify many thousand new diver per year. Statistically there are worldwide more than 6 million active diver. SSI and PADI are the most well known and respected diving education systems. The diving organisation sets up the rules and outlines for the diving education. This standards have to be kept by the dive school and dive instructor teaching all over the world. From basic standards like dive student to dive instructor ratio, underwater skills, final exam to minimum age and teaching philosophy. The dive organisation like SSI or PADI will also support their registered dive schools and diving instructor with their teaching materials and support. Both SSI and PADI follow the ISO standards which has the big advantage for the diver to be able to dive with other dive schools who follow a different teaching system and dive all over the world with this certification.autorized

 

Worldwide accepted SSI courses:

That means the diving student is not bound to one organisation but can switch between the different teaching systems. Which means you can do your Open Water course with Dive Point on Koh Tao, your Advanced with PADI in Australia and your Rescue course with SSI again back home. Both diving organisation accept the others certification. SSI and PADI have therefor a very good name in the diving world. Because they both have a very high standard and exist since a long time. Meaning they had time to learn and adjust their program. SSI especially is very active with updating their program. SSI has over 2,500 authorized dealers, 35 regional centers one of them here on Koh Tao. Which again means they have direct contact to many diving schools, diving professionals and diving students. This helps a lot to see what is working good and what needs improvement in their teaching system. They are quick and helpful

A bit of SSI history:

Scuba Schools International was founded by Robert Clark in 1970, and was one of the pioneers of professional scuba training. They were the first organization to present a complete training program including full motion video and they pioneered some areas of diving education. Since than SSI has grown to more than 30 regional center, is present in more than 110 countries on every continent with more than 2500 authorized dive schools worldwide and offers teaching materials in over 25 languages.

 

Here the main facts about the different systems in short: What is the different between SSI and PADI?

There is not a big different for the student.

• – both systems follow the same worldwide recognized standards (RSTC).
• – you are not bound to one company.
  You could do your SSI open water, PADI advanced, CMAS rescue Diver and BSAC dive master.
• – a diver certified with one of this organization can do fun dives in every dive shop all over the world.
• – SSI has a very modern online system. The online training program from SSI is free. The Padi online program has to be paid.
• – SSI allows me to borrow you the teaching materials lime the book. You can buy the paper book but you do not have to like with PADI.
• – SSI will issue a free online version of the book.
• – SSI will issue you a login on there web page and you can edit your data yourself. PADI does not allow you to do so.
• – SSI has so called flexible skills. Which means that the instructor can decide if the student is ready to do this skill. This is a big point.
  A PADI instructor has to ask you to master the one skill before he can move to the next.
  While the SSI instructor can move to another skill and later come back to the mask skill.
  At one point you have to master the skill but you will not get more and more nervous because everybody managed only you can not do it.
  A lot less people stop the course with SSI than PADI because of this.