Request for advice on dispute with RYA school

Thanks

Thank you everyone for your advice; it has been very useful. The school has promised to return my money in full and am I am awaiting the cheque in the post. I will keep you posted.

Lorraine :)
 
little_roundtop said:
There are only usually five or six people on a school boat at a time. Good schools try to vary the level of skills and courses being followed so that Coastal Skipper or Yachtmaster students have Day Skipper and Competent Crew students as crew to give them a better feel of what it's like to manage crew.
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RYA yachting courses are limited to 5 students on board.

Good schools defiantly do not mix exam candidates with Competent Crew and Dayskipper students. While this is fairly common practice among some small schools, the suggestion that this helps either level of students is a myth spread by schools who are desperately trying to fill their boat up.

A Yachtmaster candidate will not benefit from the "learn to sail" sessions a Competent Crew student needs, likewise a Competent Crew student will not benefit from long blind nav session when he has paid to learn to sail a yacht.

While i can see the logic of mixing Comp Crew and Dayskipper or even Comp Crew with Coastal skipper mixing any of theses three levels of course with a YM prep is basically a rip off.
 
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Well I think they should be named now as they clearly have a very good customer service ethos providing a full refund in these difficult times. Bravo. :D
 
Contact the RYA; I'm sure they will assist in resolving the matter and certainly wouldn't want any of their members to be engaged in such underhand activity.
 
Doug_Stormforce said:
While i can see the logic of mixing Comp Crew and Dayskipper or even Comp Crew with Coastal skipper mixing any of theses three levels of course with a YM prep is basically a rip off.
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Did most of my certs with a school that did this. I found it very useful as a YM candidate, as the questions from the CCs helped me to cement my own understanding, and the CCs got a lot of practice in manouvers, as we did rather a lot! Plus once the YM candidates had proved we could helm, the 2 CC candidates spend the rest of the time on the helm, except for manouevers. They definitely got more stick time that way.
I'd never skippered "beginners" before, and I found it a very different challenge, and one that I definitely benefited from.

Understand that it's not the only way to run courses, but to describe it as a rip off is disengenous in my experience.
 
flaming said:
Understand that it's not the only way to run courses, but to describe it as a rip off is disengenous in my experience.
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+1
CC mixed with CS or YM is fine but never mix DS with YM/CS.
I have worked for a SS where CC, DS & CS were all on the same PC.
No one wins. Not even the PS that sold the fish as PC feels SC and doesn't boomerang.
 
Talulah said:
Well since it was Friday I thought I would put in code.

No one wins. Not even the PS (Practical School) that sold the fish (places) as PC (paying client) feels SC (short changed) and doesn't boomerang (return)
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Article in the Telegraph yesterday saying Cockney Rhyming Slang was on its way out, so there's room for a new dialect.
 
Old Troll

As a YMI of many years experience with an excellent track record on Yachtmaster candidate passes, it has never even occured to me that a problem of having a mixed bag of skill levels onboard could be a problem. Every course is run to the full strength of the crew onboard and the different skill/experience levels used as a catalyst. To say anything else about the Yachmaster candidate losing out because of a mixed crew is a complete nonsense. My track record proves otherwise.
 
Old Troll said:
As a YMI of many years experience with an excellent track record on Yachtmaster candidate passes, it has never even occured to me that a problem of having a mixed bag of skill levels onboard could be a problem. Every course is run to the full strength of the crew onboard and the different skill/experience levels used as a catalyst. To say anything else about the Yachmaster candidate losing out because of a mixed crew is a complete nonsense. My track record proves otherwise.
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Old Troll

Its interesting that you have focused on the Yachmaster Candidate passing and the Yachtmaster candidate not loosing out. But what about your Competent Crew student? In my experience a lot of Instructors teaching mixed groups find themselves focusing on the exam candidates at the expense of the others. Does our CC really benefit from watching a YM candidate being put through his paces. He may feel its interesting and beneficial but is it really?

Let me ask you a question. If you had a boat load of Competent Crew students and no exam candidates on board would you demonstrate a blind nav to them so that they could see what a skipper gets up to. Of course you would not, so why therefore would anyone think it would be beneficial for the CC to watch another paying student do things like blind nav. Competent Crew students are there to learn to sail. They need lots of tacking, gybing etc. Turning them into fodder for the YMs is simply not fair, particularly when there are week exam candidates on board who are becoming more and more stressed as they get closer to the exam.

Meanwhile the YMs require some pretty high level coaching. Do they really benefit from sitting in, on learn to sail exercises? In my experience students often learn from watching others having a go and therefore YM candidates learn from watching other YM candidates. A one YM candidate on a baot of CC, DS etc gets a pretty poor prep week.

Let me ask you another question. If a sea school has say 4 YM candidates and 3 CC students and 2 DS students and has to spread them across 2 boats, how do they split the crew? I believe nearly every school would put the 4 YM candidates together on one boat and the 5 students on the second boat. Why would they do that, is it because they know this works better than mixing them all up? YMs working together are more likely to pass and beginner students spending leisure time together are more likely to have fun, not feel intimidated and therefore return back to the school.

Would you have GCSE Maths, A level Maths and Degree Maths student all in the same room together, with one teacher operating at three separate levels?

Just because schools have been mixing up the different levels of students for years does not mean this is the best way to teach sailing.
 
jimi said:
One could argue that part of the Yachtmaster Practical is how (in)competent crew are managed ;-)
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Jimi, one could argue that managing incompetent crew is part of the exam but its not the schools job to make the exam harder by giving an exam candidate inexperienced crew.

And its not really very fair on the beginner student making him pay £500 to spend a week learning how to crew an exam. Prep weeks are for exam preparation and they are intended to prepare the exam candidate for the exam.
 
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