That extreme would bother me too. Except that the learning curve for me
has
been dictated by the BCU Star system from the get go.

Shame it isn't a bit more flexible. Not that I know how you'd go about
making it so, of course, but that aspect of being cast in stone is one
of the bad things about it IMHO. Having a badge to say you've swum 50m
is one thing, but something with as many complex and varied aspects as
paddling doesn't work quite so well.

Oh I'm not sure that it isn't flexible. At the risk of upsetting a few folks
by a traceable anecdote...

In order to gain authorisation I had to start from scratch and train to the
standards expected locally. No real problem there really, except that you
don't know what standards are actually acceptable.

When doing my L2 Assessment I(and two others from my training course) were
mixed with others (some professional coaches) and on my tutorial session I
was tasked to teach high brace sculling to a group of coaches supposedly at
the same level as myself. I explained what I wanted them to do demonstrated
the high brace scull, with my head and shoulders in the water, boat at 90
degrees and sculling in the front quarter. None of the other coaches could
manage to scull with the boat beyond 45 degrees. Thinking I had been set
up, I pressed them to push their sculling further until the Assessor called
me over and somewhat sheepishly advised that it wasn't actually necessary to
scull to that level.

This was repeated with several other skills during the day. So, here I am
teaching my kids to reach standards that will get them past a Star test
carried out locally, when they could obviously pass one carried out
elsewhere without the same level of skill.... As with any subjective
assessment there will always be flexibility. An assessor who has difficulty
with, say Hanging Draw, will skip over it. One who has no difficulty with it
will press for a better standard of presentation at test.

However, I do know what you mean and I know of some unqualified paddlers who
are much better than some highly qualified ones I have seen in operation.

Ewan Scott