IB PYP Home Tutors in India for Short, Focused Sessions

Thirty minutes, or forty-five at the very most, and cut into two or three blocks with movement between them. A six-year-old who has been at school since morning has very little sustained attention left by evening, and a longer booking does not buy more learning; it buys drift. If you feel the child needs more contact time, two short home sessions in a week beat one long one. Ask the tutor how they intend to divide the time before you agree the slot.

Stay within earshot, not at the child's elbow. Being in the same room with the door open is the safeguarding arrangement, and for a young child it is the right one. But sitting alongside changes what the child does: they look at your face after every answer instead of thinking, and they stop risking a wrong one. Take the far chair with something of your own to do, do not supply answers during pauses, and let the tutor see the mistakes. The mistakes are the diagnostic.

Possibly, but ask the class teacher first and ask specifically. Reading behind peers can mean decoding, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, or simply less reading at home, and each needs a different response. Get the teacher's own description of what breaks down, in writing if you can. If the school is already running support, a tutor should work alongside it rather than start something parallel. And have her eyesight and hearing checked before adding hours, because that is a common and easily missed cause.

Below about nine, a home visit is usually necessary; above ten, online genuinely works for the right tasks. A younger child needs physical correction, objects to move and an adult who can see their hands, and none of that travels through a screen well. From ten or eleven, short online slots suit reading aloud, retelling and talking about an inquiry question. A hybrid week, one home session plus one brief online check, is what most families end up preferring.

The dining table, almost always, with the television off and the younger child occupied somewhere else. A bedroom with the door shut is not appropriate for a visiting tutor and a young child, and a bedroom desk is usually too cluttered with the child's own things to hold attention. In a compact flat in Andheri, Powai or Thane, the dining table is the only surface with proper light and a chair at the right height. Clear it completely before the tutor arrives.

Send your locality, the exact evening hour you need and your child's age, and ask to be shortlisted only from tutors who can reach you before that hour. In Bengaluru this matters more than anywhere: Whitefield and Sarjapur Road are far enough from Indiranagar or Hebbal on a weekday that a tutor who agrees to the slot in principle may not hold it in practice. Ask a shortlisted tutor where they live and what else they teach that evening.

Start the session standing up and get the child working before the chair is ever mentioned. A skilled primary tutor will begin with something physical, a card sort on the floor or a counting game, and move to the table once the child is already engaged. Refusal is usually about the transition, not the work. What a tutor should not do is bargain, threaten to tell you, or hold a standoff. If refusal repeats every week, the slot is probably too late in the evening.

No, provided the play is the teaching rather than a reward bolted on afterwards. Counters sorted into groups are multiplication. A number line jumped along the corridor is counting in threes. Acting out the order of events in a story is comprehension. What would waste the slot is free play with no learning purpose, or a game used to fill time because the tutor has run out of plan. Ask the tutor to tell you what each game is teaching.

Match photo identity to the person at your door on the first visit, keep the session in a shared room with the door open, and have an adult in the flat throughout. Tell building security who is coming and on which evenings. Keep all messages in one channel you can read, with no private contact between the tutor and the child. No photographs of the child, and no lifts in anyone's car. Tell your child they may stop and come to you at any time.

One or two, and for most children one is enough. A PYP child is at school all day and already doing the substantive work there; tuition adds a focused half hour on one specific difficulty. Three or four sessions a week for a nine-year-old is usually a sign that the wrong problem is being solved, or that a scheduling or sleep issue is being treated as an academic one. Start with one, review after six weeks, and add only if there is a clear reason.

Agree the rule before it happens, because with a young child it will happen. A reasonable arrangement is that the tutor tells you as early as they can, the session is either shifted within the same week or converted to a shorter online slot that evening, and a repeated pattern is a matching problem rather than a traffic problem. If a tutor coming from Hinjewadi to Koregaon Park is late twice a month, ask for a match closer to your cluster.

A tutor can help with the skills around it and must not touch the work itself. The exhibition falls in the final year of the programme and is the child's own inquiry, so a tutor who drafts, edits or scripts any part of it has taken it away from them. What is legitimate: helping the child narrow a question, rehearsing how they will explain it aloud, teaching them to plan a week, and calming the panic. Confirm the boundary with the school's coordinator.