Is the Assistant Instructor a relic of history? What roles are really available for the Assistant Instructor these days? If you work with a PADI Master Instructor, they can put you through an Assistant Instructor course, to many, it means you haven’t been to a PADI Instructor Development Course.

As an Assistant Instructor, you work under the direct supervision of a certified Instructor demonstrating confined water skills to entry-level students, indirectly conduct the academic presentations, in-directly assess surface skills or conduct non-diving specialty courses. The question is – but why? Well, to support course certification numbers, PADI allows Staff Instructors to certify Assistant Instructors. In fact, PADI wants their Staff Instructors to certify at least five Assistant Instructors to qualify for Master Instructor status.

The Assistant Instructor is a throwback to the military training days, there is no need to burn your hard earned cash on an Assistant Instructor Course – you won’t be making a living out of this certification. You get the feeling the Assistant Instructor is only really around for Staff Instructors to build their credits. The Assistant Instructor is really there to conduct academic presentations, they are not an Open Water Scuba Diving Instructor, so there is no unsupervised confined water or open water sessions.

The only exception is some dive resorts that have a Staff Instructor in the ranks, the Instructor will probably be looking to build their certification numbers and is willing to do a pretty good deal where you can actually run some of the courses, don’t part with money for the course though, just deal for it – everything is negotiable.