What ski insructor qualifications to pursue???CSIA,BASI,PSIA,NZSIA??

Outside of Europe, it is easy to get recognition between countries. A Level 1 from somewhere in North America would generally be recognised down under and visa-versa, a level 2 would generally improve you job prospects or options (although not nearly as much as experience would).

In some countries in Europe, the entry level is much higher and is closer to level 3 in US/CAN/NZ/AUS and so you would need a level 3 (or in some cases even a level 4) from say maybe Canada to work in say France. There is no way unless you grew up skiing every weekend of every winter or did some serious ski racing that you would be able to attain that sort of level without doing several seasons.

I am not totally sure about this (and finding someone who knows for sure always seems to be hard). I think the best way to about it is to go to one of US/CAN/NZ/AUS or BASI in Europe and do one of these gap courses for level 1 and 2 and then spend a season teaching somewhere like north america and try to get your level 3 (ski schools provide free in house training towards these qualifications, in some cases on a daily basis and teaching is excellent preparation for many aspects of the exam).

Some european countries are seriously tough to get teaching in, I think Italy is one of these. They are mostly part of this eurogroup band of countries who all recognise each others top qualifications, BASI and IASI (Ireland) are part of this.

I strongly suspect you will need to pass a Eurotest to work in Italy permanently. This is a racing test which is timed, you have to get within 12% of some hotshot's time who goes down the course first while it is still clean.

Often, there is a back door for teaching temporarily while you work towards these qualifications.

Having said all that, I have a friend who just came back from teaching secondary school students snowboarding in Switzerland (which being neutral is not part of the Euurogroup) where apparently he was something of the big man on the block with his CASI (Canada) Level 1, most of them being totally unqualified.


My advice would be to google for one of these BASI gap courses in France and then email the course director to ask exactly what you need to do.

It's not impossible, it just might mean teaching for 2-3 seasons in North America /NZ/AUS/ Switzerland to get up to the level to do this.

There isn't a "wrong path" to follow. All of Canada/US/NZ and anywhere in Europe offer really high class systems of instructing. There are differences between them but which system you came through will have a lot less effect on your ability as an instructor than your natural ability to explain new ideas and how good a skier you are. They all take the same ideas aand frame them slightly differently.

I may have been the person who said CSIA might be slightly easier, but that could have been because I did so much skiing (almost a whole season) between failing the NZ Stage 1 (Level 2 equivalent) and passing the CSIA Level 2 that my perspective could have completely changed.

I wouldn't know enough about the politics of italian ski instruction to say if they have any preference for say BASI over CSIA. I certainly know that with your CSIA 1 and 2 you would have little trouble swapping to BASI for the next level (you would need to learn slightly different mantra/dogma to spew back at the examiners but that's about it). This also works the other way around.

Also, if you are getting ski boots and are thinking of doing one of these courses, get them when you go out to start the course, the trainers will hook you up with some local boot fitter that they know (and possibly use themselves) and may have a deal as well, I have seen this before. If you aren't going to do the gap year course for another season then don't bother holding out.