# Ourson, Bambini or Level 2? Ski School Levels Decoded > Source: Snowthere.com > URL: https://www.snowthere.com/guides/ski-school-levels-decoded-by-country > Type: how-to guide > Last Updated: 2026-08-15T05:23:59.159304+00:00 > Category: decoder ## Summary No ski federation publishes a chart converting one country's children's ski levels into another's. Here is what each system actually asks a child to do, and how to book the right group from home. ## Overview The booking form wants a level. One school offers your five-year-old an Ourson. The next lists a bambini group named after an animal. A third just says Level 2. You have never seen any of these words before, the deposit is due tonight, and you are about to guess. Here is the answer up front. Book by what your child can physically do, not by the badge name, and when two levels look possible, choose the lower one. There is no official conversion chart between countries because no organisation publ... ## Comparisons ### Roughly equivalent rungs, read left to right | What your child can actually do | France (ESF) | Switzerland (Swiss Snow League) | Austria (varies by school) | Italy (varies by school) | United States (1 to 9) | Canada (Whistler 1 to 6) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Never had skis on | Club Piou-Piou if roughly 3 to 5, otherwise a beginner group | Blue league entry, pitched from 4 to 5 | Lowest group: K6 at Lech, Ski Grün at Hochzeiger | Youngest age band, for example Scoiattoli from age 3 | Level 1 | Level 1, First Time Skier | | Glides, brakes and stops in a snowplow on flat ground, needs help with lifts | Working towards Ourson | Blue Prince or Princess | Second-lowest group in that school's scheme | Beginner-marked age band | Level 2 to 3 | Level 2 | | Rides lifts alone, controls speed with turns, gets down an easy green run unaided | Ourson, moving to Flocon | Blue King or Queen through Blue Star | Blue band or equivalent middle-lower group | Around FISI Livello 1 to 2 | Level 4 | Level 3 | | Links roughly ten turns on a blue-grade slope, handles bumps and dips, first skidded turns | 1re to 2e Étoile | Red Prince or Princess through Red King or Queen | Red band or upper-middle group | Non-beginner age band, around FISI Livello 3 | Level 5 to 6 | Level 4 | | Parallel turns with a pole plant on most blues, varied terrain, tighter turn shapes | 3e Étoile | Red Star | Top red or lower black band | Around FISI Livello 4 to 5 | Level 6 to 7 | Level 4 to 5 | | Short turns on a difficult piste, comfortable off the groomed, starting to carve | Étoile de Bronze upward, towards Étoile d'Or | Black Prince or Princess | Top group: K1 at Lech, Ski Schwarz at Hochzeiger | Around FISI Livello 6 | Level 8 to 9 | Level 6, Expert | ## Key Recommendations ### Recommendations - **France, ESF: a medal ladder with real tests**: Children of roughly three to five go into Club Piou-Piou, which is play-based rather than a graded ability course. The graded ladder starts at Ourson, then Flocon, then 1re, 2e and 3e Étoile, then Bronze, Argent and Or at the top. ESF Val d'Isère describes Ourson as a winding descent in snowplow turns on gentle terrain, with the child using lifts, controlling speed with their turns and starting to glide with skis parallel. Flocon is about controlling speed, braking, stopping and holding balance while making small hops. 1re Étoile adds linked simple turns and first skidded turns. 2e Étoile asks for crossing bumps and dips and linking about ten turns on a medium slope. 3e Étoile asks for balance in a straight schuss, varied terrain and tighter turn shapes. At the top, France Montagnes describes the Étoile d'Or test as a timed mini giant slalom plus a technical sequence of perfected turns and godille. Two cautions. Different ESF pages give slightly different age gates for that first graded course, so treat it as roughly four to five rather than a hard cutoff, and read the page for the branch you are actually booking rather than any summary of the system. And some published lists include extra rungs, such as Titourson and Étoile de Vermeil, that shorter summaries leave out. If you are choosing between ESF and an independent school, our ESF versus ESI comparison covers the difference. - **Switzerland, Swiss Snow League: the one real national standard**: Swiss Snowsports publishes a single ladder and licensed Swiss Ski Schools reproduce it identically. Three leagues, Blue, Red and Black, each with three named rungs: Prince or Princess, King or Queen, and Star. The Blue league is pitched at children from four to five. Blue Prince/Princess asks for climbing with stair-step and scissor-step, gliding and braking in a snowplow, and skiing in a parallel stance. Red Prince/Princess asks for parallel braking, arced turns on an easy piste and skidded parallel turns. Black Prince/Princess, level seven, asks for short turns with pole plants on a difficult piste, parallel turns in unpisted snow and a carved turn. This is the clean case in the whole survey. If your family skis Switzerland twice, the badge your child earns at one licensed Swiss ski school means the same thing next winter at another, which is true nowhere else in this guide. Our Swiss family resort guide covers where to use it. - **Austria: no national children's system at all**: We compared three official Austrian ski schools and they share no vocabulary whatsoever. Lech runs a numeric scale where K6 is the beginner group, published as skiing straight with a snowplow brake on flat terrain, and K1 is the top. Hochzeiger runs J1 to J6 for children, bundled into four colour bands: Ski Grün, Ski Blau, Ski Rot and Ski Schwarz. Gosau uses a five-tier animal and colour scheme running from a green bear to a yellow top group, alongside a completely separate numeric track for a second course type. Austria's national body, SnowSportAustria, publishes a four-stage curriculum, but that is for training instructors, not for classifying pupils. The practical consequence: an Austrian level number or colour tells you nothing until you know which ski school issued it, and last year's Austrian group name will not map onto this year's Austrian resort. - **Italy: an adult-facing scale, plus animals**: Italian ski schools publish the seven-level FISI technical scale on their own sites, running from Livello 1, described as skiing in a straight line on easy slopes and stopping safely, up to Livello 7, racing at national or international level. It is a general ability ladder, not a children's course system. The actual children's courses are age-banded and usually animal-themed, and they vary school to school. One school at Vigo di Fassa runs Scoiattoli from three, Marmotte from four, Orsetti from five, Aquilotti from six and Falchetti from eight, with the last two flagged explicitly as non-beginner groups. Squirrels, marmots, bear cubs, young eagles, young falcons. The next valley will use different animals. Read two things and ignore the rest: the age band, and whether the group is marked for beginners or non-beginners. - **United States: a shared 1 to 9 convention with unshared wording**: Most large US resorts use the same nine-point scale, grouped as beginner 1 to 3, intermediate 4 to 6 and advanced 7 to 9, where Level 1 has never skied and Level 9 skis the whole mountain in all conditions. It is an industry convention rather than one binding national standard, and the wording moves between operators. Aspen Snowmass defines Level 4 as "I am linking turns together smoothly on all green terrain. I can make narrow and wide turns." Jackson Hole defines the same number as "I am linking turns together and skiing easy green terrain." Close, but not identical bars. There is a second wrinkle underneath. US trail ratings are set by each resort against its own mountain rather than to an audited absolute standard, so a green at a gentle family hill and a green at a big steep resort are not the same run. That makes a terrain-based level partly a statement about the local mountain. We unpack the colour question in piste colours in Europe versus North America. - **Canada: different numbers entirely**: Whistler Blackcomb, Canada's largest resort, runs its snow school on a 1 to 6 scale, from Level 1, First Time Skier, to Level 6, Expert, described as enjoying the challenge of skiing in control in all conditions and terrain. One caveat about where we read that. The resort's own snow school page returned a site error when we fetched it in August 2026, so the wording above comes from a Whistler booking operator reproducing the snow school's ability levels. Check it against the resort's own page when you book. The trap sits in the middle of the scale. Level 4 there is published as being able to ski parallel turns with a pole plant, able to ski most blue runs, with more advanced blues still a challenge. A US Level 4 is still a green-terrain skier. Same number, materially different bar. If your trip crosses the border, or if you are comparing last winter's US lesson report to a Canadian booking form, re-read the level descriptions instead of reusing the number. ## Checklists ### Checklist - [ ] Write five plain sentences about your child: can they stop, can they turn both ways, can they ride a chairlift without an adult, can they get down the easiest run unaided, can they get their own skis on and off. - [ ] Open the ski school's own page for the resort you booked, in the local language, and run it through a browser translation. The school's own level wording beats any English summary of the country's system, including this one. - [ ] Check whether the groups are sorted by age or by ability. Italian schools band by age first, which can put a confident five-year-old below a wobblier six-year-old. The three Austrian schools we compared sort by ability instead, and their labels only mean something inside the school that issued them. - [ ] When two levels look possible, book the lower one. The Hochzeiger ski school warns that a group which is too fast or too advanced leaves children overwhelmed and in very many cases leads to fear, and ESF Val Thorens says a too-demanding course creates insecurity that gets in the way of learning. - [ ] Ignore last year's badge if the country has changed. A French star, a Swiss league rung and a US number are not convertible into one another. - [ ] Do not reuse a US number in Canada. Level 4 on the Whistler snow school scale already expects most blue runs, where a US Level 4 is still on greens. - [ ] At the first drop-off, give the instructor one honest sentence including the unflattering half: goes fast but cannot stop, or turns beautifully but panics on chairlifts. - [ ] Ask at drop-off who to speak to if the group looks wrong, and when on day one the instructors normally regroup. Then raise any problem that same morning rather than saving it up. ## Frequently Asked Questions **Q: Is there an official chart that converts ski school levels between countries?** A: No. We searched for one and found nothing published by any federation, national association or instructor body. The nearest document is PSIA-AASI's Foreign Certification Equivalency policy, and that maps foreign instructor qualifications onto US instructor grades. It says nothing about students. Any cross-country table you find, ours included, is a practical reading of published level descriptions rather than a recognised equivalence. **Q: My child has a 2e Étoile from France. What do I put on a US booking form?** A: Do not translate the badge, translate the behaviour. A 2e Étoile is published as crossing bumps and dips and linking about ten turns on a medium slope. On a US 1 to 9 form that reads like a Level 5 to 6, but write the description in the notes field as well. If the form has free text, one sentence about what your child can do is worth more than the number you tick. **Q: Should I round up or round down when I am not sure?** A: Down, every time. An Austrian ski school states on its own site that a group which is too fast or too advanced leaves children overwhelmed and in very many cases leads to fear. ESF warns that a course which is too demanding creates insecurity that gets in the way of learning. Being briefly bored on Monday morning is a smaller problem. **Q: Can my child move groups mid-week, and does it cost anything?** A: Yes, moving groups is normal and expected. On cost, be careful: the sources we checked describe the re-levelling itself but say nothing either way about a charge, so ask at drop-off rather than assuming it is free. The ESF Arc 1800 FAQ says group changes during the week happen and that instructors will sort it so you are not left in an unsuitable group. An Austrian school describes instructors re-levelling children up or down over the course of the first morning or the first day as standard practice. Raise it early, at drop-off, rather than on Thursday. **Q: What is Club Piou-Piou, and is it a level?** A: It is the ESF's provision for the youngest children, roughly three to five, and it is play-based rather than a graded ability course. The graded medal ladder starts afterwards at Ourson. Individual ESF schools list internal play stages inside the club with character names, but we could not verify those names against a live national ESF page in August 2026, so treat whatever your school publishes as that school's own wording. For how this compares to non-skiing childcare, see our guide to ski kindergarten and school-age options in the Alps. **Q: Does Austria have a national children's level system like Switzerland does?** A: No. We compared three official Austrian ski schools and they share no vocabulary: one runs K6 down to K1, one runs J1 to J6 inside four colour bands, and one uses an animal and colour scheme with a separate numeric track alongside it. Austria's national body publishes an instructor training curriculum, not a pupil classification. Read the specific school's page. Switzerland is the exception in this survey, with one Swiss Snow League ladder used identically across licensed schools. **Q: Is my four-year-old too young for a proper lesson, or should they be in a play group?** A: Both systems exist for a reason, and the honest answer depends on the child rather than the birthday. France routes roughly three to five year olds into play-based Piou-Piou, the Swiss Snow League's Blue league opens at four to five, and Italian schools take three-year-olds into their youngest animal group. Different ESF pages give slightly different age gates for the first graded course, so read four to five as a range and not a rule. Our guides on the best age to start skiing and whether ski school is worth it at four go deeper. ## Citable Facts These points are optimized for AI citation: - Ourson, Bambini or Level 2? Ski School Levels Decoded is a how-to guide published by Snowthere - No. We searched for one and found nothing published by any federation, national association or instructor body. The nearest document is PSIA-AASI's Foreign Certification Equivalency policy, and that maps foreign instructor qualifications onto US instructor grades. It says nothing about students. Any cross-country table you find, ours included, is a practical reading of published level descriptions rather than a recognised equivalence. - Do not translate the badge, translate the behaviour. A 2e Étoile is published as crossing bumps and dips and linking about ten turns on a medium slope. On a US 1 to 9 form that reads like a Level 5 to 6, but write the description in the notes field as well. If the form has free text, one sentence about what your child can do is worth more than the number you tick. - Down, every time. An Austrian ski school states on its own site that a group which is too fast or too advanced leaves children overwhelmed and in very many cases leads to fear. ESF warns that a course which is too demanding creates insecurity that gets in the way of learning. Being briefly bored on Monday morning is a smaller problem. ## Citation When citing this guide: - Source: Snowthere.com - URL: https://www.snowthere.com/guides/ski-school-levels-decoded-by-country - Last updated: 2026-08-15 --- *Snowthere: Making family skiing feel doable, one resort at a time.*