IB MYP Explained for Dubai Parents: Criteria, Grades and the Choices That Matter

The first Middle Years Programme report your child brings home is where most Dubai parents discover they do not understand the system their child is in. There is no percentage. There is no class position. There are four letters, each with a number between 0 and 8 beside it, a single digit between 1 and 7 in a box at the bottom, and a paragraph of comment that uses words like inquiry, conceptual understanding and approaches to learning as though everyone knows what they mean.

That report is not vague. What follows is the IB MYP explained from the report card backwards: it is dense with information, encoded in a way that nobody explained. The purpose here is to decode it properly — the eight subject groups, the four criteria, how a raw total becomes a grade, what eAssessment is and is not, how the Personal Project is supposed to work, and the single choice in Middle Years Programme (MYP) year 4 that quietly determines which Diploma Programme (DP) mathematics route is open to your child two years later.

Two framing points before we start, because both are specific to the United Arab Emirates and neither appears in the generic MYP explainers written for a global audience. First, your child's MYP sits alongside the mandatory Emirati subjects, not instead of them — the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) requires Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies in every Dubai private school regardless of which international curriculum the school is licensed to teach. Second, our tutoring for families in the UAE runs online, one to one, by live video. We do not place a tutor in a Dubai home; that is an India-only service. Everything said below about how to support an MYP student assumes a screen, a shared document and a pen your child is holding.

IB MYP explained: what the programme is, and why Dubai families meet it around Year 6

The MYP is the International Baccalaureate's five-year programme for students aged roughly 11 to 16. It sits between the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the DP, and it is designed as a single continuous arc rather than five separate years: MYP 1 through MYP 5, mapping onto the ages at which a British-curriculum school would say Year 7 to Year 11 and an Indian-curriculum school would say Class 6 to Class 10.

What makes it structurally unusual is that it is a framework, not a syllabus. The IB does not publish a content list for MYP Sciences the way Cambridge publishes a content list for IGCSE Physics 0625. It publishes aims, objectives, assessment criteria, key concepts and related concepts, and leaves the school to build the units. Two IB World Schools a twenty-minute drive apart in Dubai can teach genuinely different MYP Sciences content and both be fully compliant.

This is the first thing that confuses parents arriving from a content-specified system, and it has a practical consequence worth stating plainly: you cannot buy an "MYP Year 8 Science syllabus" and work through it, because there isn't one. What you can do is ask the school for its unit planners, which name the key concept, the related concepts, the global context and the criteria being assessed for each unit. Those documents are the closest thing to a syllabus your child has, and most Dubai schools will share them if asked directly.

The takeaway: there is no "MYP Year 8 Science syllabus" to buy, which is why the unit planners are the single most useful document a Dubai MYP parent can ask for. Families arriving from a content-specified system feel this most, and our guide to moving to Dubai with IB children covers the rest of that adjustment.

In Dubai the programme arrives at a particular moment in a family's life, and the timing matters. Many families move to the emirate when a parent changes job, which lands a child in MYP 2 or MYP 3 mid-year, straight out of a system where every assessment produced a percentage. The adjustment is real and it is usually a term long. Judging the school, or the child, on the first MYP report is a mistake we see repeatedly. Where in the emirate you land shapes how survivable that first term is, which is the subject of our guide to the best areas in Dubai for IB families.

The eight subject groups, and where the mandatory UAE subjects sit alongside them

Every MYP student studies all eight groups. There is no dropping subjects in MYP 1 to MYP 3, and only limited flexibility in MYP 4 and MYP 5.

Criteria names are as set out in the IB's MYP subject guides; the guides are revised periodically, so check the version your school is teaching with its MYP coordinator rather than relying on a web page.

Read down the criterion columns rather than across the rows and the design of the programme becomes visible. Criterion A is almost always about knowing. Criterion B is almost always about the process of getting somewhere — investigating, planning, inquiring, developing. Criterion C is almost always about producing or communicating the result. Criterion D is almost always about stepping back and evaluating. The MYP marks the whole arc of intellectual work, not just the answer at the end. A child who knows a great deal and cannot design an investigation will get a strong A and a weak B, and the report will say exactly that.

That is the structural difference from every system that marks the final answer. A child can be wrong at the end and still have earned three criteria out of four — and a child can be right at the end and have earned one. Subject support that targets only the answer is working on a quarter of the marks: see MYP sciences tutoring, MYP physics, MYP chemistry and MYP biology for how the criteria are worked on separately.

Now the UAE layer. On top of those eight groups, KHDA requires Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies in all Dubai private schools whatever the licensed curriculum, with the requirements to be implemented by the start of the 2025-26 academic year — April 2026 for schools whose academic year begins in April (KHDA mandatory subjects guidance). Several details in that guidance affect your child directly:

• Schools must organise separate classes for Arab and non-Arab students in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies. KHDA states that combined classes for both groups are "strictly prohibited due to the different curriculum expectations and language of instruction".
• Standard Arabic must be the main language of instruction for Islamic Education for Arab students and for Arabic as a first language, and Arabic is the primary language for Social Studies for Arab students; non-Arab students are taught Islamic Education and Moral, Social and Cultural studies in the school's licensed-curriculum language.
• Instructional time is calculated on a 40-minute lesson unit, schools may vary lesson length provided the total weekly time is met, and KHDA advises that any mandatory subject lesson should run at least 25 minutes.
• For the mandatory subjects, "the use of any different or additional content, without prior permission from the MoE, is strictly prohibited" — which is why a tutor cannot simply build their own Social Studies course.
• Teachers of Islamic Education and Arabic must hold appropriate KHDA approval to teach those subjects.

The arithmetic is the point. Your MYP 4 child is carrying eight IB subject groups plus up to three mandatory UAE subjects, and in MYP 5 the Personal Project lands on top. When you are deciding whether to add a weekly tutoring session, that is the week you are adding it to. Our MYP Arabic support page for Dubai sets out how the language stream is handled.

The takeaway: twelve commitments, not eight. That is the week a weekly tutoring session is being added to, which is why the honest answer in MYP 5 is sometimes "no". For the language stream itself, MYP language acquisition tutoring is the phase-matched starting point.

How MYP marking works: four criteria, 0 to 8 each, and the conversion to a 1-7 grade

This is the mechanism that nobody explains at the parents' evening, and understanding it changes what you do about a disappointing report.

Each criterion is marked against published descriptors in bands, out of 8. A task does not usually assess all four criteria; a Sciences practical write-up might assess B and C, while an end-of-unit test assesses A. Over a reporting period the teacher gathers several judgements per criterion and arrives at a single best-fit level for each. Those four levels are then summed, giving a raw total out of 32, and the total is converted to a grade from 1 to 7 using the IB's published general grade boundaries.

Boundaries as set out in the IB's MYP general grade descriptors, published in the MYP subject guides and in the programme's teaching and learning documentation. Descriptor wording is summarised here; the authoritative text is the version your school is teaching, and your MYP coordinator can supply it.

Three consequences follow, and all three are actionable.

A grade 5 can conceal very different problems. A raw total of 20 could be 8-4-4-4 or 5-5-5-5. The first child knows the content cold and cannot investigate, communicate or evaluate. The second is uniformly mid-range. Those two children need completely different support, and the single-digit grade cannot tell them apart. Always read the four criterion levels, not the grade.

The takeaway: the single digit is the least informative number on the report. Two children with identical grades need opposite interventions, and only the four criterion levels can tell you which child you have.

The jump from 4 to 5 and from 5 to 6 is bigger than the numbers suggest. Moving from a 4 to a 5 means moving from "applies effectively in familiar classroom situations" to "applies well in unfamiliar situations". That is not more revision; that is a different skill. Grinding more past questions in a familiar format will not do it. Working on unfamiliar-context application will.

The boundaries themselves are why the jump feels steep. A raw total of 23 and a raw total of 24 are one mark apart and a grade apart, and the mark in question is almost never in criterion A — it is the evaluation paragraph nobody wrote. The same arithmetic governs the DP, which is where our guide to scoring a 7 in IB maths in Dubai picks the thread up.

Criterion D is where marks sit unclaimed. Reflecting on the impacts of science, applying mathematics in real-life contexts, thinking critically, evaluating a design — these are genuinely assessed and genuinely teachable, and they are the criteria students most often treat as the optional paragraph at the end. A child who writes a thorough evaluation has gained marks that cost less effort than the same gain in criterion A.

Why an MYP report looks nothing like a British or CBSE report card

Parents arriving from a Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) or British background usually ask three questions in the first term, and all three have the same answer.

Where is the percentage? There isn't one, and the absence is deliberate. A percentage is a measure against a fixed mark scheme. MYP criterion levels are measures against a described standard of performance. The two are not convertible, and a school that publishes a conversion is inventing it.

Where is the class rank? The MYP does not rank, and most Dubai IB schools will decline to provide one even informally. The programme's position is that a criterion-referenced judgement tells you what the child can do, while a rank tells you only about the other children in the room.

Why does the comment talk about "approaches to learning" rather than content? Because approaches to learning (ATL) are formally part of the programme, and because in MYP the method is assessed, not merely encouraged.

The takeaway: nothing is missing from the report. The information you are looking for is there in a form you have not been taught to read, which is what the next two sections are for.

If your child has come from CBSE or an Indian state board, the transition deserves its own planning, and the longer piece on switching from CBSE to IB in Dubai goes into the subject-by-subject detail. For the broader comparison of the three systems available in the emirate, see IB, IGCSE and A-Level compared for UAE families.

MYP eAssessment: what it is, who sits it, and what it is not

Here is a point of genuine confusion in Dubai, and it is worth being precise because families make school decisions on a misunderstanding of it.

MYP eAssessment is the IB's externally validated assessment route at the end of MYP 5. It combines on-screen examinations in some subject groups with externally moderated ePortfolios in others, plus moderation of the Personal Project, and it leads to the IB MYP Certificate. Results are reported on the same 1-7 scale, and the certificate carries published minimum requirements that your school's MYP coordinator can confirm in their current form.

Three things it is not:

It is not compulsory. eAssessment is an option a school chooses. A school can run a fully authorised MYP and enter no candidates at all, with students receiving school-reported MYP grades instead. If external validation matters to you, ask the admissions team directly whether the school enters MYP 5 candidates for eAssessment — do not infer it from the fact that the school is an IB World School.

It is not what most Dubai MYP students actually sit at 16. A large number of IB-licensed schools in the emirate run MYP in the lower years and then switch to Cambridge or Pearson Edexcel International GCSE for Years 10 and 11 before entering the DP. This is a legitimate and common pattern, and it means the route is MYP 1 to MYP 3, then IGCSE, then DP. If you expected five years of MYP, ask early; the two models produce very different Year 10 and 11 experiences.

It is not a reason to panic about mathematics streaming. The eAssessment examination in mathematics is sat at the level the student has been taught, which brings us to the choice that actually matters.

Support for the eAssessment route specifically is set out on our MYP eAssessment preparation page and the related MYP eAssessment tutoring page.

The takeaway: a fully authorised IB World School can enter nobody for eAssessment and teach IGCSE in Years 10 and 11, which is a legitimate and common Dubai pattern — but it is not what most parents assume they are buying. If the IGCSE route is the one your school runs, our Cambridge IGCSE 0580 study plan for Dubai students is the next thing to read.

The Personal Project: what a tutor may and may not do

The Personal Project runs in MYP 5. The student chooses a goal, plans and executes it independently, keeps a process journal, and writes a report assessed against criteria covering planning, applying skills and reflecting. It is supervised by a member of school staff, and the student's own authorship is the whole point of the exercise.

This is where the tutoring market in Dubai has a problem, and parents should know the shape of it. In researching this market we found a provider selling completed IB Internal Assessments at AED 3,750. The Personal Project version of that offer exists too. Buying it is an academic-honesty breach, the supervisor signs to confirm the work is the student's own, and a misconduct finding at this stage follows a student into the DP.

The takeaway: every step on the left belongs to the student and every note on the right is the whole of what support means here. A provider offering any of the left-hand column as a deliverable is selling a misconduct finding.

So, specifically, with no ambiguity:

Our MYP Personal Project support page and the Personal Project help page for Dubai describe the boundary in the same terms.

Standard or Extended Mathematics: the MYP 4 choice that shapes the DP route

If there is one decision in the MYP with consequences a parent should see coming, it is this one.

From MYP 4, mathematics is usually taught in two streams: standard mathematics and extended mathematics. Extended covers the standard framework plus additional topics. Both are legitimate; both lead to a grade from 1 to 7; neither is a dead end. But the stream a student is in for MYP 4 and MYP 5 shapes how comfortably they can enter DP Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches (AA) at Higher Level, which is the most algebraically demanding of the four DP mathematics routes.

The four DP routes are Analysis and Approaches at Standard Level and Higher Level, and Applications and Interpretation (AI) at Standard Level and Higher Level. Many degree programmes in mathematics, engineering, physics and some economics courses express a preference for Analysis and Approaches, often at Higher Level, which means the MYP 4 streaming decision can reach forward into a university application.

The practical advice is narrow and specific. If your child is in standard mathematics in MYP 4 and has a stated ambition that points at Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level — engineering, physics, pure mathematics, quantitative finance — raise it with the school in MYP 4, not in MYP 5. The bridge is perfectly buildable, and it is far cheaper in effort when it is spread across eighteen months than when it is attempted in the summer before DP1.

The takeaway: the stream does not cap the grade, it caps which DP route is comfortable — and the bridge between them is buildable at 8 to 12 weeks if it starts in MYP 4 rather than the summer before DP1.

Subject pages: MYP mathematics tutoring in Dubai, MYP standard mathematics and MYP extended mathematics. For the downstream decision, see the AA versus AI guidance page and the longer article on choosing between IB Mathematics AA and AI as a UAE student.

Approaches to Learning: the part parents dismiss and DP1 punishes

ATL appears on the report as a paragraph of comment, which makes it look like a soft add-on. It is not. ATL covers thinking, research, communication, social and self-management skills, and it is the programme's explicit attempt to teach the things that a content syllabus assumes a student will absorb by osmosis.

Self-management is the cluster that decides how DP1 goes. A DP student runs six subjects, three at Higher Level, plus TOK, the 4,000-word Extended Essay and Creativity, Activity, Service, across two years with long-horizon deadlines that nobody chases weekly. A student who has never maintained their own deadline calendar meets that in October of DP1 and drowns, regardless of how able they are.

The takeaway: every item on that list is a self-management demand rather than a content demand, and self-management is the criterion the MYP report has been commenting on for three years. Support on MYP arts and MYP design does more for it than most parents expect, because both are run as long independent projects.

The MYP builds that skill deliberately: the process journal in the Personal Project, the planning criterion in Design and in Physical and Health Education, the investigating criterion in Sciences and Mathematics. When a parent says "my child is bright but disorganised", the MYP report has usually been saying so for three years in criterion B and in the ATL comment.

What actually helps, in order of effect: a single shared calendar that the student owns and the parent does not edit; a weekly fifteen-minute review of what is due in the next fortnight; and work broken into named pieces rather than named subjects. "Finish the Science investigation" is not a task. "Draw the results table and write the first three lines of the evaluation" is.

Service as action, interdisciplinary units and the parts that are not graded

Three components of the MYP produce no grade on the report and are still mandatory, and families routinely underestimate all three.

Service as action is the MYP's community engagement requirement, the precursor to the DP's Creativity, Activity, Service. It is documented rather than graded, and the documentation is the student's responsibility. A child who leaves it entirely undocumented until MYP 5 creates a scramble in the most crowded year of the programme.

Interdisciplinary units bring two or more subject groups together and are assessed against their own criteria — typically covering evaluating, synthesising and reflecting. They are often the most intellectually interesting work a student does, and they are the work students most often treat as a break from real lessons.

The learner profile — the ten attributes the IB expects programmes to develop — is not decoration. It is the vocabulary teachers use in reports and the frame the DP continues. When an MYP report says a student is not yet a reflective learner, that is a specific observation about criterion D performance expressed in the programme's own language.

What MYP 5 has to deliver before DP1

The transition from MYP 5 into DP1 is where the programme's design either pays off or shows its gaps. Here is what the receiving DP teachers assume, by subject area.

Our transition pages cover the two most common Dubai routes: the IGCSE to IB transition course for students who sat IGCSE in Years 10 and 11, and the Higher Level versus Standard Level guidance page for the subject-level decision that follows.

The takeaway: the mathematics gap is both the longest and the one with the hardest deadline, because the DP moves too fast to rebuild algebraic fluency in term time. That makes the summer before DP1 the only comfortable window — our IB summer holiday study plan for the UAE sets out how to use it, and DP Mathematics AA HL tutoring is where the bridge usually runs.

When MYP tutoring earns its fee in Dubai, and when it does not

An honest answer to a question we are asked constantly. There are four situations where weekly MYP support reliably repays the cost, and several where it does not.

It earns its fee when the problem is one named criterion. A child scoring 7 on criterion A and 3 on criterion B in Sciences has a diagnosable, teachable problem: they cannot design an investigation. Six to eight focused sessions on experimental design will move that, and the movement will show on the next report.

It earns its fee at the mathematics stream boundary. A standard-stream MYP 4 student aiming at Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level needs a planned bridge, and a planned bridge is exactly what a weekly session is good at.

It earns its fee for a mid-year arrival. A child who lands in MYP 3 in January from a content-specified system is being asked to learn an assessment model and a set of unfamiliar expectations at the same time as the content. Short, intensive support through the first term shortens the adjustment.

It earns its fee when a language is genuinely behind. Language acquisition phases are not age-based, and a student placed above their actual phase struggles invisibly for a long time, because comprehension hides the productive gap.

Where it does not repay the cost: a general "top-up" with no named criterion and no named weakness; a session added in MYP 5 on top of the Personal Project, eAssessment preparation and the mandatory UAE subjects, when the real constraint is hours in the week rather than teaching; and anything bought because the grade is a 5 and the parent wanted a 6, with no analysis of which criterion is low. Of those three, the second does active harm.

What MYP support actually costs in Dubai

The market first, and ours second, with everything attributed.

Monthly shape, from the same research: packages advertised at AED 799 a month for eight online sessions and AED 1,599–1,799 a month for four two-hour in-home sessions, with Bestimate estimating AED 240–600 a month for budget weekly hours, AED 600–1,200 mid-market and AED 1,000–2,000 or more for specialist examination-year support.

The takeaway: the in-home package is the top of the ladder and is not the most specialist rung on it. Four two-hour visits a month cost more than an examination-year plan with a named programme specialist, and the same pattern holds on the British track — see IGCSE tutor fees in Dubai.

Three observations specific to the MYP rather than the DP.

The in-home premium buys less at MYP level than it does at DP level. The scarce resource at MYP is a teacher who understands criterion-referenced assessment, and that teacher is no more available in your neighbourhood than anywhere else. A live video session with the right person beats a convenient session with the wrong one.

The takeaway: at DP level the in-home premium at least buys a scarce subject specialist to your door. At MYP level the scarce thing is understanding of the criteria, and that does not travel by car. The same session runs identically from MYP tutoring in Abu Dhabi, MYP tutoring in Sharjah or MYP tutoring in Dubai Marina.

Timing beats volume, and short bursts beat long retainers — our note on the best time to start IB tutoring in Dubai makes the same argument with the calendar attached. MYP problems are usually criterion-shaped, which means they are finite. A block of eight sessions on experimental design is a better purchase than a two-year weekly booking, and we would rather say so.

Context matters when you set the budget. KHDA confirmed on 22 May 2026 that private school fees in Dubai would not rise for the 2026-27 academic year, under the emirate's second economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion within a AED 2.5 billion total (KHDA). The school fee is the fixed part of the household education budget; tutoring is the discretionary part, and it should be bought against a named problem.

For delivery detail, see our MYP tutoring page for Dubai, the online MYP option, and the subject pages for MYP sciences, MYP language and literature, MYP individuals and societies and MYP design. The full set of Dubai pages is linked from the Dubai hub.

What we are not claiming

Short and explicit, because this market needs it.

IB Gram holds no approval, accreditation, licence or partnership from KHDA, the Department of Education and Knowledge in Abu Dhabi, the Sharjah Private Education Authority, the Ministry of Education, the International Baccalaureate, Cambridge International or Pearson. A KHDA Educational Services Permit is a specific licence issued to training institutes with physical premises in Dubai; we do not describe ourselves as holding it, and nor should any provider that cannot show the permit.

We have no relationship with, endorsement from or affiliation to any named Dubai school, and we do not publish school lists implying otherwise. We do not promise grades. We do not publish a star rating, review count or any statistic we cannot evidence with its sample size, date and method.

On tutor legality, which parents are right to ask about: individuals providing private lessons in the UAE require a private tuition work permit from the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, introduced under Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023, granted free of charge for two years through MoHRE's private tutor licensing service. Those operating without one are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws; no fine schedule is published, so treat any page quoting an amount with suspicion. We set the permit out in full in the UAE private tutor work permit explained.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the IB Middle Years Programme actually mean for a child in Dubai?

The MYP is the IB's five-year framework for students aged roughly 11 to 16, running from MYP 1 to MYP 5 and covering eight subject groups with no subject dropped in the early years. In Dubai it runs alongside the mandatory Emirati subjects, because KHDA requires Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies in all private schools regardless of the licensed curriculum. It is a framework rather than a content syllabus, so your school builds the units; ask for the unit planners, which name the concepts and criteria for each unit.

How is an MYP grade from 1 to 7 calculated?

Each subject is assessed against four criteria labelled A to D, each marked out of 8 against published descriptors. The four criterion levels are summed to give a raw total out of 32, and that total converts to a grade from 1 to 7 using the IB's published general grade boundaries: 28-32 is a 7, 24-27 a 6, 19-23 a 5, 15-18 a 4, 10-14 a 3, 6-9 a 2 and 1-5 a 1. Two children with the same grade can have very different criterion profiles, so read the four levels rather than the single digit.

Why is there no percentage or class rank on my child's MYP report?

Because MYP assessment is criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced. A percentage measures performance against one mark scheme; an MYP criterion level measures it against a described standard of what a student can do. The two are not convertible, and any school or tutor publishing a conversion is inventing it. Class rank is not published because a rank describes the cohort rather than the child. The information you want is in the four criterion levels and the approaches-to-learning comment.

Is MYP eAssessment compulsory for IB schools in Dubai?

No. eAssessment is the IB's externally validated route at the end of MYP 5, combining on-screen examinations, moderated ePortfolios and Personal Project moderation, and leading to the IB MYP Certificate — but a school can run a fully authorised MYP and enter no candidates. Many IB-licensed Dubai schools run MYP in the lower years and then teach Cambridge or Pearson Edexcel International GCSE in Years 10 and 11 instead. Ask the admissions team directly which route the school runs, in writing, rather than inferring it.

What is the difference between MYP standard and extended mathematics?

Extended mathematics covers the standard MYP mathematics framework plus additional topics, with noticeably heavier algebraic demand. Both streams are assessed on the same 1-7 scale and a 7 is available in either, so the stream is about content covered rather than the grade ceiling. The consequence is downstream: extended continues naturally into DP Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches at either level, while a standard-stream student aiming at Analysis and Approaches at Higher Level needs a planned bridge, usually built across MYP 5 and the following summer.

Can a tutor help with the MYP Personal Project?

Yes, within clear limits. A tutor can pressure-test whether the goal is achievable in the available weeks, translate the assessment criteria into plain language, show what a usable process journal entry looks like, teach source evaluation, and explain how a reflection differs from a description using the student's own draft. A tutor must not supply the goal, reconstruct the journal, find and summarise the sources, or draft or edit the report to completion. The supervisor signs to confirm the work is the student's own, and a misconduct finding follows a student into the DP.

How much does MYP tutoring cost per hour in Dubai?

Market rates read in October 2026 run roughly AED 45–150 an hour for budget online tutoring, AED 150–300 for a qualified subject teacher online, AED 180–500 for an in-home visit including the tutor's travel, and AED 200–450 or more for an IB programme specialist. Those are other providers' own published figures. At MYP level the in-home premium usually buys less than it does at DP level, because the scarce resource is a teacher who understands criterion-referenced assessment rather than someone who can reach your table.

Does IB Gram send MYP tutors to homes in Dubai?

No. For families in the UAE, sessions run online, one to one, over live video. Sending a tutor to a home address is a service IB Gram operates in India, not here, and we will not promise a tutor at a Dubai address. The Dubai in-home market does exist and charges roughly AED 180–500 an hour, with the premium over online rates reflecting travel time rather than better teaching. Live video also widens the pool for narrow needs such as MYP extended mathematics or a specific language acquisition phase.

My child's MYP grade is a 5 and we want a 6. What should we actually do?

Stop looking at the grade and look at the four criterion levels. A raw total of 20 that reads 8-4-4-4 and one that reads 5-5-5-5 both produce a 5, and they need opposite interventions. Then note that moving from 5 to 6 means moving from applying understanding well in familiar and some unfamiliar situations to applying it with insight well beyond practised contexts — a different skill, not more revision. Target the lowest criterion, and ask the teacher what specifically would move it.

Do IB MYP students in Dubai have to study Arabic and Islamic Education?

Yes. KHDA requires Arabic, Islamic Education and Social or Moral Studies in all Dubai private schools whatever the licensed international curriculum, with implementation due by the start of the 2025-26 academic year — April 2026 for schools whose year begins in April. Separate classes are required for Arab and non-Arab students in Arabic as a first language, Islamic Education and Social Studies, and combined classes are prohibited. Instructional time is calculated on a 40-minute lesson unit. These subjects sit on top of the eight MYP groups, so count them when planning the week.

What is service as action in the MYP, and is it graded?

Service as action is the MYP's community engagement requirement and the precursor to the DP's Creativity, Activity, Service component. It is documented rather than graded, and the documentation is the student's own responsibility. Because no grade attaches to it, students routinely leave it undocumented until MYP 5, which is the most crowded year of the programme — the Personal Project, the eAssessment entries where a school makes them, and in many Dubai schools the IGCSE year as well. Start the record in MYP 4 and keep it short and current.

How long before DP1 should we close a mathematics gap?

For a student moving into DP Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches, the gap is almost always algebraic fluency rather than missing content, and eight to twelve weeks of focused work is the usual requirement. The important part is when those weeks sit. The DP moves too quickly to rebuild algebraic fluency during term time, so the summer before DP1 is the right window — it is the cheapest, lowest-pressure block in the whole MYP arc. If the stream decision itself is the issue, raise it in MYP 4 rather than MYP 5.

What should I ask at the next MYP parents' evening?

Ask one specific question per subject rather than a general one. "What would move criterion B from 4 to 6 in this subject?" produces a usable answer; "how is she doing?" does not. Also ask for the unit planners, which name the key concept, related concepts, global context and criteria assessed for each unit — they are the nearest thing to a syllabus an MYP student has. If your child is approaching MYP 4, ask how the mathematics streaming decision is made and whether a later move between streams is permitted.