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IB Extended Essay Help in India Within the Rules That Bind It

The Extended Essay is an independent research essay of up to 4,000 words and roughly 40 hours of work, supervised by a teacher at your child's own school. A home tutor can teach the research skill behind it. Nobody outside the school may write, rewrite or edit the submission, and this page explains exactly where that line falls.

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Extended Essay help in India, without crossing the line

IB Extended Essay help in India usually means one specific arrangement: a home tutor who teaches the research and writing skill, while the school supervisor keeps charge of the essay itself. That split is the whole subject of this page. The Extended Essay (EE) is an independent research essay of up to 4,000 words and roughly 40 hours of work, supervised by a teacher at the student's own school, with reflection sessions recorded along the way. It is written in one Diploma Programme (DP) subject or as an interdisciplinary essay, graded A to E, and combined with Theory of Knowledge (TOK) for up to three diploma points. A tutor may teach a student how to narrow a research question until it can actually be answered. A tutor may not write a sentence of the essay. Both halves matter, and families get into trouble by learning only the first.

Matching

How does a request for IB Extended Essay help in India turn into a shortlist?

It starts with five questions, and none of them is about tutors. Which DP subject is the essay registered in? Has a research question been agreed with the supervisor, or is it still a topic? Which reflection session has already happened? What did the supervisor actually write on the last piece of work handed in? And what is the school's own internal deadline, which is almost always earlier than the one families assume? Those five answers decide everything. A DP2 student three weeks from a full-draft deadline needs a different person from a DP1 student still deciding between a Group 3 essay and a Group 4 one. Only after that does matching begin. IB Gram asks about board, syllabus, level, school calendar, location and schedule, then shortlists tutors whose profiles are verified and match those needs. For IB Extended Essay help in India the match is narrower than for ordinary subject tuition. A Physics tutor who is strong on Paper 2 is not automatically right for an essay investigating the damping of a driven oscillator, because the essay rewards a controlled method and a sustained argument rather than a fast correct answer. A History tutor who knows the syllabus period may still have never supervised a student through source criticism on a local archive. The shortlist stays short on purpose. Each profile comes with a plain note on why that person fits this essay, in this subject, at this stage of the year. You then run a demo or trial session before committing, and the sensible way to use it is to bring the student's current research question and watch what the tutor does with it. A tutor who immediately offers a better question has told you something worrying. A tutor who asks what evidence the student could realistically gather before May has told you something useful. Lessons run at home, online or hybrid, subject to tutor availability. If the fit is wrong after two or three sessions, ask for a different match rather than waiting, because Extended Essay time is the one thing a DP student cannot buy back.

1. Send the DP subject, the draft research question and the school's internal deadline dates.

2. Book a free consultation covering level, supervisor feedback, weekly schedule and locality.

3. Receive verified tutor profiles matched to that subject, that stage and that calendar.

4. Run a demo or trial session using the student's own research question, subject to availability.

5. Fix a weekly slot at home, online or hybrid, and change the match if it is not working.

IB and IGCSE tutors matched by subject, level and learning need

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Where the Extended Essay sits in the Diploma Programme, and why it earns points in India

The Diploma Programme runs over two years, DP1 and DP2, with six subjects drawn from six groups. Three or four of those are taken at Higher Level (HL), which carries 240 recommended teaching hours, and the rest at Standard Level (SL) at 150 hours. Every subject is graded 1 to 7. Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essay together add up to three further points, so the maximum award is 45. The diploma minimum is 24 points, subject to the International Baccalaureate's failing conditions, and Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) must also be completed. Read that arithmetic once and the EE stops looking like an optional extra. The essay is graded A to E, and an E in either the EE or TOK is itself a failing condition. A student can sit six strong papers and still not hold a diploma. That is the reason families in India who have never heard of the EE in DP1 suddenly hear about nothing else in DP2, and why an unstarted essay in January is a genuine emergency rather than an administrative one. Exam sessions run in May and November. Schools in India overwhelmingly enter candidates for the May session, which fits an academic year running roughly April to March, and May results are released in early July. Every EE deadline a family will meet is therefore an internal school deadline set backwards from that May session, not a date published by the IB for parents to look up. One warning about sources, and it matters more here than anywhere else on this page. The EE guide was updated for first assessment in 2027. Older blog posts, coaching handouts and even some tutors still quote criterion mark allocations from the previous version. Do not use them. The only version that counts is the one your DP coordinator issues to the cohort, and a tutor who cannot tell you which version they are working from should not be marking anything against criteria.

Six subjects from six groups; three or four at HL, 240 hours, the rest SL at 150.

Subjects graded 1 to 7; TOK and the EE add up to three points towards a maximum of 45.

An E grade in the Extended Essay is a failing condition, whatever the six subject grades say.

Indian schools enter the May session; results arrive in early July.

Follow only the EE guide version your DP coordinator issues, updated for first assessment in 2027.

Subjects

Can a research question actually be answered in 4,000 words?

Most of them cannot, and that is the single most common reason an essay goes wrong. Up to 4,000 words sounds enormous to a sixteen-year-old and is in fact very little once background, method, evidence, analysis and evaluation each take their share. A question like 'To what extent did liberalisation change the Indian economy' is a book. A question naming one industry, one measurable outcome and two fixed years is an essay, because the evidence has edges and the student can see the finish line from the start. The test is simple to apply at home. Ask the student to say, in one breath, what evidence they will gather, where it will come from, and what answer would count as 'no'. If they cannot, the question is still a topic. A Group 4 essay asking how the temperature of a tennis ball affects its coefficient of restitution passes that test: the student knows what to measure, what to vary and what to control. An essay asking how temperature affects materials does not, and it will still be vague in February. The essay is written in one DP subject or as an interdisciplinary essay, and the subject choice does more work than students expect. The same curiosity about a local lake becomes a Biology essay about a named indicator species, a Geography essay about catchment land use, or an Economics essay about a pricing externality, and each of those is assessed by that subject's own criteria. Choosing the subject the student is stronger in usually beats choosing the subject the topic first suggested. This is also where a tutor earns their fee legitimately. Good IB extended essay guidance at this stage is almost entirely questioning: what would you measure, who has already written about this, what will you do if the data is thin in February. The student writes the question down. The supervisor approves it. The tutor never hands one over, because an extended essay research question that arrived from outside tends to collapse the moment the student has to defend it in a reflection session.

Name the outcome, the variable and the boundary: one industry, one species, two fixed years.

Ask what evidence exists before falling in love with the topic.

Pick the subject the student is stronger in, not the one the topic first suggests.

An interdisciplinary essay is allowed, and is harder to keep inside 4,000 words.

The student writes the question, the supervisor approves it, the tutor only questions it.

Local coverage

IB Extended Essay help in India: home tuition from Delhi NCR to Kochi

In Delhi NCR the essay competes with the road. A student in Vasant Kunj, Chanakyapuri or South Delhi can usually hold a weekday evening slot without much trouble. A family in Sector 128 Noida, Greater Noida, Faridabad or Ghaziabad is asking a tutor to cross the region at the worst hour, and evening traffic between Gurugram (Gurgaon) and South Delhi can stretch a short trip badly. Families looking for IB Extended Essay help in Delhi often settle on one longer home visit at the weekend, with a short midweek call to check reading. Along Golf Course Road and in Dwarka the same pattern wins. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region splits differently. Bandra, Juhu, Andheri, Worli, Lower Parel, Malabar Hill and Powai sit close enough together that a home tutor can hold two evenings a week, while Navi Mumbai, Vashi, Kharghar and Thane are a separate travel problem in the monsoon. Parents searching for IB Extended Essay help in Mumbai from those suburbs frequently take a hybrid week rather than lose a session to waterlogging in July, which is exactly when a DP1 student should be settling a research question. Bengaluru is the clearest case for hybrid home tuition. A specialist living in Jayanagar or on Kanakapura Road will not reliably reach Whitefield or Sarjapur Road on a weekday evening, and families in Electronic City, Hebbal or Yelahanka face the same arithmetic in reverse; HSR Layout, Koramangala and Indiranagar have the shortest hops. IB Extended Essay help in Bangalore therefore often runs as one home session and one online session. Chennai behaves better: Adyar, Besant Nagar, Alwarpet and Nungambakkam are compact, while Anna Nagar, Velachery, Perungudi and Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) stretch a tutor's evening. Requests for IB Extended Essay help in Chennai, in Hyderabad and in Pune follow one rule: proximity buys reliability, not quality. Outside those clusters the arithmetic changes. Across southern India beyond Bengaluru and Chennai, in Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Madurai, the specialist a particular essay needs may simply not live in the city, and the same holds for the rarer subjects in Kolkata and Ahmedabad. Finding an Extended Essay tutor anywhere in India is a supply problem before it is a preference, and online is often the honest answer rather than the fallback.

Delhi NCR: weekend home visits usually beat weekday evenings across Noida, Faridabad and Ghaziabad.

Mumbai Metropolitan Region: Navi Mumbai, Vashi, Kharghar and Thane suit a hybrid week in monsoon months.

Bengaluru: Whitefield, Sarjapur Road and Electronic City rarely sustain a cross-city weekday home tutor.

Chennai: Adyar, Besant Nagar and Alwarpet are compact; OMR, Perungudi and Velachery are not.

Southern India beyond the metros: Kochi, Coimbatore, Mysuru and Visakhapatnam usually need an online specialist.

School ecosystem

Which school deadlines in India really govern the Extended Essay?

The ones your coordinator sets, and they are earlier than you think. Parents arrive naming a school, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Oberoi International School, Ecole Mondiale World School, Pathways World School, Stonehill International School, Indus International School, Oakridge International School, Mahindra International School, Good Shepherd International School or The International School Bangalore, as though the name settles the timetable. It does not. Internal EE deadlines differ between schools and between cohorts in the same school, and the only reliable source is the sheet the DP coordinator hands out. IB Gram is an independent platform and is not affiliated with any school named here, the International Baccalaureate, Cambridge International Education or Pearson Edexcel. What is common across international schools in India is the shape of the year. The academic year runs roughly April to March and candidates are entered for the May session, so DP1 usually carries subject choice, topic selection and the first reflection session, and the summer break between DP1 and DP2 is where the research is supposed to happen. It frequently does not. A student who arrives in DP2 with a question but no data has lost the cheapest months of the whole project. Then DP2 stacks up. Internal assessment deadlines in several subjects, mock examinations, CAS obligations still open, and university applications for students applying abroad all land in the same two terms as the EE full draft and the final reflection session. Schools stagger these deadlines deliberately, which is why a home tutor who has read the school's published calendar plans a term differently from one who only knows the subject. Practical advice for parents: photograph the coordinator's deadline sheet and share it with the home tutor in the first session. Ask the school which date is the draft the supervisor will comment on, because the IB's academic integrity policy allows a teacher to give feedback on one draft, and a student who spends that single comment on an unfinished chapter has thrown away the most valuable feedback in the entire process.

Internal EE deadlines come from the DP coordinator's sheet, not from any public IB calendar.

The DP1 summer break is the natural research window, and the one most often wasted.

DP2 stacks internal assessments, mocks, CAS and applications against the EE draft deadline.

Identify which draft the supervisor will comment on before submitting anything to them.

Share the school calendar with the home tutor in the first session, not the fourth.

Modes

Home tuition, online or hybrid for Extended Essay sessions in India?

Home tuition wins on accountability, online wins on supply, and hybrid wins for most DP2 students in a metro. That is the comparison in one sentence, and everything below is detail about which constraint is biting hardest in your house. A home tutor sitting beside the student sees what a screen hides. Whether the reading has been done or only downloaded. Whether the notes exist. Whether the student opens the document and immediately reformats the title page instead of writing. For the Extended Essay, where the failure mode is avoidance rather than misunderstanding, that visibility is worth a great deal, and a fixed weekly home session creates an external deadline in a project that otherwise has almost none between reflection sessions. Home classes also make the parent's role easier to keep correct: present in the house, not in the room. Online wins on a different axis. A student writing in a thinly taught subject, or attempting an interdisciplinary essay, may need someone who does not live in their city at all. Screen sharing suits this work unusually well, because most of a session is two people looking at the same document, the same criterion descriptor from the coordinator's guide, or the same source. Online sessions also survive monsoon evenings and exam-week timetable changes that would cancel a visit outright. Hybrid is what most families actually run once DP2 starts. One home visit for the long drafting and planning work, one shorter online call midweek to hold the student to the plan. It handles the travel problem and the motivation problem together, and it is the usual shape of IB Extended Essay help in India once the calendar tightens. The honest limit of all three modes is identical: none of them lets anyone else write the essay, so none of them rescues a student who will not start.

Home tuition: highest accountability, and it creates a weekly deadline the essay otherwise lacks.

Online: reaches the subject specialist your city may not have, and survives monsoon and mock weeks.

Hybrid: one home visit for drafting, one online call midweek to keep the plan honest.

Screen sharing suits this work because most of a session is two people reading one document.

No mode changes the boundary; the student writes every word in all three.

Compare

Who can genuinely help with an Extended Essay in India?

Four sources of help, and they are not interchangeable. The school subject teacher who supervises holds authority the others cannot borrow. A one-to-one tutor buys attention on the research skill. A coaching batch costs less per hour and lets a student see how other candidates frame a question. Self-study here means working alone from the guide and exemplars the school issues, since the Extended Essay has no past papers at all.

Who can genuinely help with an Extended Essay in India?
What mattersOne-to-one subject tutorSchool subject teacherSubject coaching batchSelf-study with past papers
Authority over the essayNone; cannot approve a research question or give the official draft commentHolds it entirely: approves the question, runs reflection sessions, comments on one draftNone, and a batch tutor is furthest from the school's view of the studentThe student owns the work, which is the correct default position
Attention on the research questionHigh; a whole session can be spent narrowing one question until it is answerableLimited by class load across a full cohort of superviseesLow; a batch cannot narrow twenty different questions in one sittingDepends entirely on the student's own judgement, which is often the weak point
Seeing how others frame a questionRare, since the tutor works with one student at a timeSome, where the school runs cohort workshops on the essayStrongest here; peers discussing different subjects sharpen everyone's questionNone, unless the school issues exemplar essays to read
Reflection sessionsCan help the student prepare, but must never attend oneRuns them and records them; this is the supervisor's own roleNo role at all in reflection sessionsThe student prepares alone, which is achievable with a written research log
Academic integrity boundaryClear rule: teach the skill, never touch the submitted textDefined by policy: feedback on one draft onlyRisk rises if a batch is handed shared structures or model paragraphsSafest by construction, because nobody else is involved
Subject depth for a narrow topicCan be matched precisely to the essay's subject and its research methodStrong in the taught syllabus, sometimes thinner on an unusual methodPitched to the batch's common ground rather than one unusual topicLimited to what the student can find and evaluate without guidance
Travel and scheduling in Indian citiesHome visits or online; a hybrid week absorbs traffic and monsoon disruptionAlready at school, so no travel, but only within school hoursFixed batch timings that clash with mocks and internal assessment deadlinesNo travel and no timetable, which is why it slips first
Cost structureCharged per session, so the most expensive per hour of the fourIncluded in school fees with no extra chargeShared across the batch, so markedly lower per hourNo cost beyond the student's own time
Who it suitsA student stuck on the question, the method or the structureEvery candidate, always; this relationship is not optionalA DP1 cohort still at the topic-selection stageAn organised student with a clear question and an available supervisor
Verification

How do you check an Extended Essay tutor will respect the boundary?

Ask them, in the trial session, to describe something they have refused to do. A tutor who has worked on Extended Essays honestly will have a ready answer, because the request comes constantly and refusing it is part of the job. A tutor who looks puzzled by the question has either never done this work or has been doing it the wrong way. IB Gram verifies profiles before they go live: identity, the qualifications a tutor claims, and the subjects and levels they say they teach. What a platform cannot see is what happens in the twelfth session at eleven at night when a draft is due the next morning, so the family's own checks matter as much as ours. Watch for the tutor who offers to polish the draft, who sends a sample essay in the same subject so the student can see the structure, who asks for the document with editing rights rather than comment rights, or who tells you the school will never know. Each of those is a warning sign, and the last one is simply false. It is false because of how submission works. The school submits the work and runs it through similarity checking, and malpractice findings are handled by the IB, not by the school alone. A supervisor who has watched a student reason aloud through several reflection sessions also knows what that student's writing sounds like. The risk is not abstract, the consequence falls on the candidate rather than on the tutor, and no refund repairs it. The questions worth asking before you book are narrow. Which version of the EE guide are you working from? How do you give feedback on a paragraph without rewriting it? What will you do if my child asks you to fix the conclusion the night before the deadline? You are not testing subject knowledge with any of these. You are testing whether the person understands that the EE help IB families can legitimately buy is coaching in a skill, not production of a document.

Ask the tutor to describe a request they have refused, and listen for a ready answer.

Give comment rights on the document, never editing rights.

A sample essay in the same subject, offered for structure, is a warning sign rather than a resource.

Confirm which version of the EE guide the tutor is working from.

The school runs similarity checking, and the IB rather than the school alone rules on malpractice.

The supervisor owns the essay: what an outside tutor may and may not do

The Extended Essay is supervised by a teacher at the student's own school, with reflection sessions recorded along the way. That supervisor is not a formality and cannot be replaced by anyone you hire. They approve the research question, they hold the reflection conversations, they write the supervisor comment, and they are the one person entitled to give feedback on a draft. The IB's academic integrity policy allows a teacher to give feedback on one draft. It does not allow anyone, tutor or parent, to write, rewrite or edit the student's submission. Take a real situation. A DP2 student in Powai has written an analysis paragraph that states a finding but never connects it back to the research question. Here is what a tutor may legitimately do. Read the paragraph with the student and ask what the reader is supposed to conclude from it. Point at the relevant criterion in the coordinator's copy of the guide and ask the student to reread their own paragraph against it. Teach, on a completely different example, how a claim is linked to evidence and then back to the question. Then close the laptop and let the student rewrite the paragraph alone. Here is what would be malpractice. Typing a better version of the sentence into the document. Dictating a topic sentence for the student to copy down. Rewriting the conclusion to show what good looks like and leaving it there. Restructuring the whole essay in a comment for the student to paste in. Correcting every reference so the student never learns the style. Producing a marked-up draft that functions as a second supervisor comment when the policy allows one. None of those becomes acceptable because the student typed the final keystrokes. The distinction holding all of this together is between the skill and the artefact. A tutor may teach the skill without limit: search strategy, source evaluation, experimental design, how to structure an argument, how to read a criterion descriptor. The artefact, the 4,000 words that get submitted, belongs entirely to the student. Families buying IB Extended Essay help in India should say this out loud to the tutor in the first session, because the pressure to cross the line rarely comes from a dishonest tutor. It comes from a frightened student at midnight.

May: question the reasoning, point at a criterion, ask the student to reread their own paragraph.

May: teach referencing, search strategy and experimental design on examples outside the essay.

May not: write, rewrite or edit any sentence that will be submitted.

May not: supply a research question, a structure to paste in, or a model paragraph left in place.

The supervisor gives feedback on one draft; a tutor's marked-up draft must never substitute for it.

Reflection sessions are between student and supervisor, and a tutor has no place in them.

The 40 hours: where they really go, and what honest progress looks like

Roughly 40 hours is the figure, and families misread it as writing time. It is not. A realistic split puts a large early block into reading and narrowing, because finding out that the intended question has already been answered, or cannot be answered with the sources available, takes several sittings and is work well spent. Then comes gathering: the experiment run and rerun, the archive read, the survey designed, the dataset cleaned. Only after that does drafting begin, and drafting is rarely the largest share of the total. Reflection sessions and the supervisor's comments sit across the whole span, and the hours spent preparing for one are real hours. A student who walks into a reflection session with nothing to report has wasted a checkpoint that exists precisely to catch a stalling project. Preparing properly means being able to say what has changed since last time, what went wrong, and what the next concrete step is. So what does progress look like from a parent's chair? In DP1, a subject chosen and a question that has survived being narrowed twice. Over the summer, sources actually read and notes that exist as notes rather than as open browser tabs. Early in DP2, data in hand and an outline that maps evidence to argument. Then a full draft that goes to the supervisor as the one draft they may comment on, and a final version the student revises alone. If a month of IB Extended Essay help in India has produced no movement along that sequence, the tutoring is not working, whatever the sessions felt like at the time. The honest limits deserve stating plainly. No tutor can guarantee a grade on an essay they are forbidden to write. Starting in the last term narrows the work to salvaging a structure and finishing something submittable. A weak research question cannot be rescued late without abandoning research already done, which is a decision only the student and the supervisor can take. And some students do not need a tutor at all. They need the supervisor's time and a calendar they actually keep.

Reading and narrowing usually consume more of the 40 hours than drafting does.

Preparing for a reflection session is real project time, not overhead.

DP1 milestone: a question that has survived being narrowed at least twice.

Summer milestone: sources read and notes written, not browser tabs left open.

No movement along that sequence after a month means the tutoring is not working.

Starting Extended Essay home tuition in India: what to send before the first session

Four things, and they take ten minutes to gather. The DP subject the essay is registered in. The current research question, in whatever rough state it exists. The coordinator's deadline sheet, photographed. And the supervisor's last written comment, which is usually the single most informative document a tutor can read before meeting the student. Send those with a note about your locality and the evenings that actually work, because a weekday slot in Andheri and a weekday slot in Greater Noida are not the same request. Say whether you want home classes, online sessions or a hybrid week. Say whether there is a quiet room, or whether the dining table is the study space, which is perfectly normal and worth the home tutor knowing in advance rather than discovering. The first session then has a fixed job. The tutor reads the question aloud with the student and tests whether it can be answered with evidence the student can actually obtain before the school deadline. They map the remaining weeks against the coordinator's dates. They establish what the student already has: sources, data, notes, or nothing. And they agree out loud what the tutor will and will not touch, which should be said in front of the parent so that nobody is confused about it later in the year. What you get afterwards is a weekly rhythm and a plan the student can hold, not a manuscript. A demo or trial session can be arranged before you commit, availability depends on the subject and the schedule you need, and if the match is wrong you can ask for a different tutor. That is the whole of what IB Extended Essay help in India should be, and anyone offering more than that on an Extended Essay is offering something you should refuse.

Send the DP subject, the current research question and the coordinator's deadline sheet.

Include the supervisor's most recent written comment on the student's work.

Say which evenings work and whether you want home classes, online or a hybrid week.

The first session tests the question against evidence the student can actually obtain.

Agree the boundary aloud in the first session, with the parent present.

IB Gram is an independent tutoring platform and is not officially affiliated with any school named on this page, the International Baccalaureate, Cambridge International Education or Pearson Edexcel.

FAQs

IB tutoring FAQs

Can a tutor write or edit any part of my child's Extended Essay?+

No, and this is the one rule with no exceptions. The IB's academic integrity policy allows a teacher to give feedback on one draft; it does not allow anyone, tutor or parent, to write, rewrite or edit the student's submission. A tutor may teach the underlying skill, question the reasoning, point at a criterion and ask the student to reread their own paragraph against it. The school submits the work and runs it through similarity checking, and malpractice findings are handled by the IB rather than by the school alone. The consequence falls on the candidate.

What can an Extended Essay tutor legitimately do, then?+

Plenty, and it is the part that actually raises the quality of the essay. A tutor can teach search strategy and source evaluation, help the student test whether a research question is answerable with evidence they can obtain, teach experimental design or data handling on examples outside the essay, explain how a criterion descriptor is worded, and ask the questions that expose a gap in the reasoning. They can also hold the student to a weekly plan. What they hand back is a better researcher, not a better document.

How do we narrow a research question so it fits 4,000 words?+

Add boundaries until the evidence has edges. Name one case, one variable, one period, one text or one population. A useful test at home: ask the student to state in one breath what they will measure or read, where it comes from, and what result would count as a negative answer. If they cannot, it is still a topic rather than a question. The supervisor approves the final wording, and a question the student cannot defend in a reflection session was never really theirs.

Is a home tutor better than online help for Extended Essay work?+

For accountability usually yes, for subject match often no. A home tutor sees whether the reading was actually done and creates a weekly deadline in a project that otherwise has almost none between reflection sessions. An online specialist may be the only person who understands an unusual method or a thinly taught subject. Most DP2 families in metros end up hybrid: one home visit for drafting, one shorter online call midweek. Decide on which constraint is hurting more, rather than on preference.

Our home tutor in Mumbai already teaches my child Economics. Can they supervise the Extended Essay?+

No. The Extended Essay is supervised by a teacher at the student's own school, and that role cannot be transferred to anyone the family hires, however well they know the student. Your home tutor in Bandra or Powai can support the research skill and help the student prepare for reflection sessions, but the supervisor approves the research question, holds the recorded reflection sessions and writes the supervisor comment. Treat the two as separate jobs, and tell the tutor at the start which one they hold.

Where do the 40 hours actually go?+

Mostly not into writing. Roughly 40 hours is the expected scale of the whole project, and reading and narrowing typically take a large early block, because discovering that a question cannot be answered with the available sources is itself necessary work. Gathering comes next: running an experiment, reading an archive, cleaning a dataset. Drafting is rarely the biggest share, and preparing for reflection sessions counts too. Students who treat the figure as writing time start far too late.

What happens in a reflection session, and can our tutor join one?+

It is a recorded conversation between the student and the school supervisor about how the research is going, and no outside tutor attends. The student should arrive able to say what has changed since last time, what went wrong, and what the next concrete step will be. A tutor can help the student prepare for it, which is legitimate and often valuable, but the session itself belongs to the supervisor. Ask your coordinator how many are scheduled and when, because schools time them differently.

We live in Hyderabad and the right specialist is in Bengaluru. What do we do?+

Take the specialist online, and add a local tutor only if the problem is discipline rather than subject depth. For an essay in a thinly taught subject, the person who understands the method matters more than the person who can reach your door, and screen sharing suits this work well because most of a session is two people reading the same document. Families in Kochi, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Mysuru face the same shortage constantly, and online is the honest answer rather than a compromise.

The school draft deadline is a month away and almost nothing is written. What now?+

Talk to the supervisor before hiring anybody. They can tell you what a submittable essay looks like from where your child currently stands, and whether the question needs abandoning. After that, a tutor can help build a week-by-week plan and hold the student to it. Be realistic about what is left: starting this late usually means salvaging a structure and finishing something honest rather than producing the essay the student first imagined. No tutor can guarantee a grade on work they may not write.

Which version of the Extended Essay guide should we follow?+

The version your DP coordinator issues to the cohort, and nothing else. The EE guide was updated for first assessment in 2027, so older handouts, blog posts and coaching notes frequently quote criterion mark allocations that no longer apply. Never let a tutor mark your child's work against numbers pulled off the internet. Ask the coordinator for the current document, share it with the tutor, and treat any tutor who cannot tell you which version they are using as unprepared for the job.

Can a tutor fix the referencing and proofread for grammar?+

Teaching referencing is fine, doing it is not. A tutor may explain the referencing style, work through examples that are not from the essay, and point out that a section has a problem with citation consistency. Correcting the entries themselves means the student never learns the skill and means someone else edited the submission. The same applies to proofreading: naming a recurring error pattern is teaching, while silently repairing sentences inside the document is editing, and only one of those is permitted.

How much do Extended Essay sessions cost, and how often should they run?+

Fees depend on subject, level, locality and whether sessions run at home or online, so any figure quoted before those are known is guesswork. Frequency matters more than intensity here. One steady weekly session across DP1 and early DP2 does more than a block of daily sessions in the final month, because the essay is limited by research done between meetings rather than by contact hours. Availability depends on the subject and the schedule you need.

Ready to plan IB support?

Send the DP subject, the current research question, the coordinator's deadline sheet and the supervisor's last comment, or book a free consultation and we will ask for them. You will get a short list of verified tutor profiles matched to that subject and stage, a demo or trial session before you commit, and lessons at home, online or hybrid. If the fit is wrong, ask for a different match.

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