Scuba School specialises in providing scuba diving instruction to school groups and we can tailor our courses to the needs and timetable of your students. Learning to dive is a great opportunity for pupils to push themselves outside their comfort zone, to learn a new skill, complete a Duke of Edinburgh’s Hillary Award requirement and maybe develop a new passion. Diving can also help teach and develop important life skills, such teamwork, self-reliance and responsibility, and feeds into other core curriculum subjects such as maths, physics, biology and outdoor education.

Safety:

Scuba School Ltd is a fully WorkSafe health and safety audited Adventure Activity Operator. Our health and safety documentation has been independently audited and is available for you to review at any time. The courses we teach are from the Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) suite of training opportunities. This ensures students benefit from over 50 years of diving safety, tuition and materials development. Our instructors are all PADI-qualified diving professionals and have been selected for their aptitude in teaching children and youth groups.

When we undertake open water dives, our instructors carry out a pre-trip and an on-site risk assessment of the conditions on the day. Should the conditions indicate that a dive is not feasible we will either move to a more suitable location or postpone the dive to a later date.

PADI have developed strict rules regarding the ratio of student divers to instructors. Scuba School Ltd regards these ratios as the absolute maximum and we prefer to take a more conservative approach to our ratios.

In addition to the in-water instructor/s, we require a shore-based dive lookout to be at the open water dive sites with us. Usually this would be a member of staff from your school.

Learning:

In a PADI Open Water Diver certification course, a number of theory modules, quizzes and knowledge reviews have to be completed. These can be undertaken in a classroom setting, but we have found that today’s students are often more comfortable using the PADI ELearning framework on their devices. The ELearning option allows students to work at their own pace and in their own time through the theory of diving, interactive videos, slide shows and quizzes, as well as the final exam. When the practical side of the course starts, students will complete a quick quiz to ensure they have remembered what they have learnt online. The ELearning resources are second to none and explain all the concepts in an easy-to-understand format. However, should any student have difficulty with any aspect of the course, our qualified instructors are always available. A total of five pool dives must be completed and various skills mastered prior to graduating to open water. Typically, we use each school’s own pool for these dives, but should that not be possible, we have options for hiring pool facilities. For open water dives we use a variety of dive sites around Canterbury, depending on the weather. These range from Banks Peninsula to Kaikoura to Lake Coleridge and the decision on where to dive will be made on the basis of weather forecasts and sea state forecasts. Scuba School Ltd is able to offer the full range of standard courses from the PADI scuba diving curriculum, up to and including the first level of professional qualification – PADI Divemaster. We are also able to offer some PADI Speciality Courses, including Peak Performance Buoyancy and Emergency Oxygen Provider, as well as Emergency First Response first aid training and certification. ELeaning options are also available for many of these courses and each diving course has its own confined water and open water dive requirements.