ISIA, the worldwide organization for professional ski instructors, which includes 40 national professional ski instructor associations, 31 of them from Europe and 21 from member countries of the European Union, has unlocked their ski instructor database and thus made it available to the public.
It can be found on the ISIA website at www.isia.ski.
In the ISIA database, if registered by their home associations, all professional ski instructors who have obtained a corresponding qualification for the ISIA card or ISIA trademark are listed.
The criteria and conditions for obtaining the qualifications are in the 2008 ISIA delegate meeting in Jesolo (see https://isia.ski/isia-kongress-2008-und-Anschlussprogramm/) adopted “ISIA Minimum Standard” (since DV 2018 “ Quality Standard “) described.
It will be easy for both the consumer and ski schools, lifts, authorities and control bodies to recognize who has completed a qualified education.
At present, the European Commission is discussing in Brussels the adoption of a delegated act, which aims to bring ski instructor training to an almost equal standard throughout Europe in order to simplify mutual recognition of the job profile and to promote the mobility of ski instructors.
ISIA has no direct say within the European bodies, which is why it is trying to cooperate with other organisations that are recognised and heard by the Commission.
In order to guarantee a high quality of the professional profile ‘ski or snow sports instructors’ and to ensure the safety of consumers, ISIA advocates a delegated act, but on the basis of a ‘common training framework’ pursuant to Article 49/a of Directive 2013/55. In the course of a transparent procedure, the common training framework defines the knowledge, skills and competences that must be required by a vocational ski instructor, as has already been done at the association level in ISIA by the “minimum standard”. ISIA is also in favour of the ISIA Technical Test described there, starting from the base time of the 50 FIS Points drivers, as well as the ISIA safety test.
A delegated act in accordance with Article 49/b of the Directive, which is based on ‘joint training examinations’ and specifically on the ‘Eurotest’, is rejected by ISIA. 15 years of experience with the so-called “Eurotest” have shown that such an exam is not an adequate means to determine who can be a ski instructor and who cannot! In order to make the negotiations in Bruxelles a successful conclusion, we believe that the “minimum standard ISIA-Card” with the giant slalom on time and the security test is a good basis for further negotiations. We ask all representatives who take part in the negotiations in Brussels to put the vocational ski instructor and not his own wishes in the foreground and to support the minimum standard adopted by the Assembly of Delegates. According to the motto: “Better the sparrow in your hand than the dove on the roof”.