I haven’t looked at this closely yet. Equine Canada already has a strong certification program in English disciplines that they could build on.
No idea what I think!
It is primarily to meet safe sport requirements set by the government/safe sport. Some good ideas and some really impractical ones. I personally have little faith in EC’s ability to make it a viable program - they tend to be good at the buzz word stage, but rather shakey on the practical real world details.
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I’m not familiar with the program, but I support the idea in general. It seems to me that there is currently an overabundance of people calling themselves trainers - people who have been riding for a long time and have spent hours online watching videos of colt starting, maybe started a few of their own, but who have never competed successfully at an upper level in their discipline. Most people can train most horses, but can they identify a horse that will be successful in a specific discipline at a high level, and get that horse and rider to that level? Maybe model it more along the lines of the BHSI program.
People like me who have been around know what to look for on a resume. People who are newer to the sport don’t know what credentials are meaningful, and what it means when a trainer lacks credentials, or a resume. I want to see a trainer compete successfully at the national level, maybe be a carded judge, and have students that compete successfully at the national level.
the Primary purpose of the program appears to have little or nothing to do with the trainer’s ability to train a horse but to oversee their interaction with their students to eliminate abuse
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A riding instructor program should be geared to teaching.
There are plenty of excellent instructors that didn’t compete at the highest levels.
There are plenty of competitors at the highest levels that are bad teachers.
For most students, what they need when learning is a good instructor.
That means one that knows what is supposed to teach at the level it is teaching.
For the students at the highest level, it makes sense they need someone proficient at instructing at those higher levels, regardless of how much or how successful they were themselves.
The European certification programs did/do that.
One reason, they are geared for professionals.
Decades ago, professionals were not riding against the rest of riders in most classes, other than hors concours.
They were not permitted at all in the biggest show, the olympics.
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I took the survey. It exposes lots of places where EC is likely to go wrong at high cost to the larger membership base. :no:
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I just took the survey from that link. I encourage all EC members to take it. There are some really good ideas, but also a lot of completely and utterly impractical ones.
Like requiring photo ID to access the warm up ring. Sounds good in principle, but imagine trying to enforce that at Caledon Equestrian Park (Palgrave) with all five rings each churning through 300 trips a day. Not gonna happen.
There is little to no provision or cost/benefit analysis for incentivising uncertified coaches to become certified at this point. At the upper levels, I think certification means diddly squat. Your credentials are your results–both your own and your students’.
But at the grassroots level, it SHOULD be everything. And it’s not. OK, if you want to work at one of the good riding schools, you need your Level 1. But you don’t need ANYTHING to teach private clients, or your own kids. And the only way that will change is if the insurance industry simply denies coverage without that piece of paper. But wait! Join Ontario Equestrian and you automatically get liability insurance! Also, the truly incompetent/negligent (who need liability coverage the most), do not care.
Like @sherian I have little faith in EC’s ability to pull off a comprehensive program. At best, we will piggyback on USEF, which, considering the amount of cross-border traffic among competitors, would not be the worst thing ever.
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personally I believe the results would be better if the Student was required to obtain the licence so they would know what is improper behavior
Can EC have jurisdiction over the disciplines it doesn’t oversee? Like bronc riding or even barrel racing?
As far as coaching insurance, in BC yes you get personal liability insurance when you join Horse Council BC. But that isn’t instructors insurance and doesn’t cover coaching. You need to buy that individually at more cost.
Assume Ontario is similar.
You get a discount if you are EC certified.
Out here, EC certification is common among coaches in English disciplines but not applicable to non English ones.
Noncertified English coaches tend to divide into 2 categories, those that can’t pass the riding exam and those who are too advanced to want to bother with it.
So on one hand, yahoo backyard young adults who really don’t know enough to coach kids. And on the other hand, adults with competition records or European qualifications who figure they are doing just fine and don’t need to go show the testers how to set a cross rails grid and do a leg yield.
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Well I know of some “EC Certified” trainers that I wouldn’t recommend anyone too (actually sometimes I’m flabbergasted at how people have gained certification, or is it THAT easy?)…I also know of some I would…I also know of trainers, like Scribbler, with European qualifications that are far superior or at least just as good as some of the best Canadian qualified trainers! To me, word of mouth, trumps all…just seeing “EC qualified” honesty is a crap shoot! Watching the warm up and (lower level) show rings at shows, shows a whole lot of what good and what’s not!
The question about having to hold a “trainer card” and showing photo id to access places like warm up ring, in gate etc, is utterly impractical…what about those that have no trainer and utilize a friend to help them set fences, or we as riders, helping our fellow riders at the in gate etc. The shows I go to, already have stewards that monitor the warmup rings and they monitor them like a hawk already…they hear a trainer yelling, or see something dangerous or illegal, and they have NO qualms about stepping in…as it should be!
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It’s true about the variability of EC certified coaches. The test is not that easy, it’s basic but I watched a teenage acquaintance ride it and fail years ago, before I really had enough eye to be able to be able to say now what went wrong. It involves low jumping and basic flatwork.
I see a number of EC coaches over 40 that just do dressage and I doubt could pass the jumps now, but I assume did the test when they were younger, thinner, fitter, braver.
I also see EC coaches that have adopted all kinds of bad dressage shortcuts of the head frame, semi rolkur, see-saw hands, front to back category, but I think they pick these up from the BNT that also teach and ride that way. I would assume same kind of thing about picking up bad techniques happens in h/j.
The EC certification is a minimum standard of riding, take a written test, do a demo lesson. It isn’t actually a training program with a philosophy or curriculum. So if you can come in and ride in a fairly competent way on a well behaved horse, no one is asking if you trained him with draw reins and 2 sets of martingales hunter style or rolkured him dressage style or whatever you do out behind the barn.
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Yeah. I think one of the things that is going to be crazy hard for all equestrian sports to police is what happens at home barns, whether it’s to do with equine welfare/training, quality of instruction or physical/emotional/sexual abuse.
With most other sports, there are centralized training facilities and established leagues (Little League for baseball, House League for hockey and so on), especially if a kid wants to be in an elite athlete program. But in our sport, anyone can call themselves a professional coach and give lessons at their own home. No insurance at all.
And given that most parents don’t know a fetlock from a forelock, they can’t make educated decisions on quality or safety. And I’m sure many assume there is insurance, or never even consider it!
Side note out of curiosity: anyone know what Major Junior Hockey is doing to cope with NGB “SafeSport” type rules? Almost every kid in that league lives far away from home and billets with a local family. And while I’m sure those families have to jump through lots of hoops in terms of background checks, there’s got to be some that pass with flying colors then get up to shenanigans behind closed doors…
All that SS can do is to provide a framework that makes it easier to recognize and complain about behavior that happens at the home barn. It provides a shared understanding that it’s not OK for instance for a male coach to be handsy or make inappropriate comments, and that if you see it happening to someone else, you need to report it and not just think oh well, mind my own business.
When I was a teen and young adult, handsy and lewd and predatory were just Standard Operating Procedure for adult men. You learned to duck and avoid and deflect, or you ended up marrying your high school teacher two months after graduation, after having sex with him for a year or two presumably. Or a local trainer could get away with extorting sex from minors for at least 20 years until changing standards in the 1980s sent him to jail for a long long time.
I watched those changing standards roll through in the 1980s, with relief and enthusiasm :), and perfected my duck and avoid, and indeed aged out of the prime target age range for creepsters. Anyhow, the #metoo movement was a bit of a surprise for me in that it showed that the changing standards hadn’t changed enough, or had even been rolled back a bit.
What SS can do is change standards so that everyone in a millieu understands what isn’t acceptable. Absolutely many many people knew what was going on between teens and adults in authority in the 1970s, they just thought that it was OK (she married her teacher, that’s sweet, it was even in the high school yearbook) or none of their business, or no one would take them seriously.
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I was shocked when I got to the part of “what would you pay for the benefits” $100-500…is that per year? Honestly (and what I wrote) is I would likely just stop taking students to EC shows if I had to pay a significant amount for certification. I would support (and pay for) on-line type courses for concussion awareness and safe sport type training, with the idea I would be able to advertise that I took the training…and then customers can decide if they feel that is of benefit to them. I have no intention of pursuing coaching qualifications through EC at this stage of my career. The cost isn’t likely worth the benefit seeing as I am already working to capacity.
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An additional concern would the increased exposure to legation. Since a person would be certified that they have competed a specific training then if their actions do not follow through with the training they increase their exposure to potential legation for failure to act.
There is a free MOOC on concussion offered periodically by Université Laval with the University of Calgary. I just took it. I’ll be putting the certificate up on the wall with my others. Safe Sport-type training is offered at low-ish cost by a firm used by Scouts Canada. (I did that one too.)
As for the cost of certification not being worth the benefit: I agree. Just going through the process takes a good investment. We were all laughing back when the CEF started promoting Coaching Certification: a Federation representative actually told us that we’d recoup any costs as we’d be making $20K a year as coaches as soon as we had become certified. That was back in the '70’s. Big money back then! Just a little out-of-touch, but no surprise there.
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The big difference to understand here, for those that are familiar with the current EC certification is that “licensing” will be different from “certification”. The starting point for being licensed is to have safesport training, a record check and insurance. It will have absolutely nothing to do with training or coaching ability and everything to do with legal requirements and insurance. The proposed costing I understand, is to include insurance. A current certified freelance coach insurance starts at about $250 a year. If you are not certified, I believe it starts at about $700. EC is looking at becoming the middleman for coaching insurance just as your provincial sport organization is currently a middleman for personal liability insurance.
It’s unfortunate that their communication on this is so unclear as it will likely go through as a requirement of Sport Canada and could certainly streamline some processes.
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Well, there are multiple insurance companies offering coaching insurance.
What power would EC have to enforce licensing? They could I suppose limit participation in EC rated shows to those coaches who have a license. But I don’t see what power they would have to enforce licensing on coaches who teach but don’t show, or only go to schooling shows, or whose students show alone, or for any coach or trainer outside the EC sport disciplines.
If EC was able to broker a more affordable insurance product for licensed coaches, that would be an incentive for people who aren’t in the competition loop to get licensed. But of course there are lots of coaches out there that don’t have insurance, or are covered under a blanket policy for barn insurance. Not EC certified, not buying insurance, just doing their thing.
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@Livie If you own your own farm (like I do), then coaching insurance is actually quite cheap, and it adds nothing to my costs to add another instructor (as long as they only coach for my business), so being certified doesn’t offer people like me any real financial incentive…and I think it is the people who coach out of their own facilities that probably need some sort of regulation more.
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so just how would that be done? This proposal that OP has posted, it appears the only teeth it has is to limit ones ability to show/attend one of its accredited shows
The primary thrust of the proposal is to have jurisdiction on the safe sport #metoo type movement questions and transgender discrimination
and there are actually real laws in place both in Canada and the US covering those
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