IB PYP Tutors for Reading, Maths and the PYP Exhibition

No. PYP has no external exam sitting, no May or November session, and no Paper 1 or Paper 2 the way the Diploma Programme does. Assessment happens continuously, through classroom observation, portfolios and a summative task at the end of each unit of inquiry. The closest thing to a single big moment is the PYP Exhibition in the final year, a collaborative research project, not a written exam. Parents searching with DP terms like 'past papers' or 'mock exams' for PYP won't find an equivalent, because the programme is genuinely built differently.

There's no fixed cutoff, but the useful window narrows fast in the final weeks. The Exhibition is a term-long collaborative research project, and support that works best starts while the research question is still being shaped, not once slides are already being built. A tutor joining in the last week or two can still help with structure, presentation and confidence, but can't meaningfully influence research depth at that point. If the Exhibition is the main concern, starting even a few weeks earlier than feels necessary is genuinely worth it.

Fees depend on the tutor's experience and the session length, and are confirmed before booking rather than fixed platform-wide. A tutor with specific early-literacy or numeracy-intervention experience is typically priced differently from a general primary tutor, and that difference is real, not arbitrary. Home tutoring may cost differently from online tutoring with the same person, since travel time is a genuine cost. Ask for a clear number before committing, and expect it to be reviewed if the child's needs change, for example moving from general support into focused Exhibition help.

It depends on the child more than the age, but roughly under seven or eight, home tutoring is usually more practical, since young children often need physical materials, frequent redirection, and someone in the room to notice when attention has genuinely gone. Older PYP students, especially in the last year or two of the programme, generally manage online sessions well. If home tutoring isn't available in your area, online can still work for a younger child, but expect shorter, more structured sessions rather than a full hour of screen-based work.

Yes, and with young children this matters more than it might for an older student, because rapport affects how much a child actually engages. If a tutor's pace, tone or manner isn't landing after the first few sessions, ask for a different match rather than persisting out of politeness. The new match considers what specifically didn't work the first time, whether that was pace, personality or teaching style, so the second attempt is better informed than the first, not just a random reassignment.

Some schools genuinely don't, especially in the early years, trusting the unit of inquiry process itself to build skills without formal take-home work. That doesn't mean there's nothing to work on with a tutor; it means the tutor's first job is finding out, directly from you and your child, what's currently being covered in class, since there's no worksheet to check against. Tutoring in this situation tends to focus on core skills like reading and number sense alongside whatever the current unit's themes are, rather than following a homework sheet that doesn't exist.

As closely as the tutor can, though IB Gram has no access to any school's internal planning and PYP looks different from one school to the next even within the same framework. The first session or two usually involves the tutor asking what the current unit of inquiry is, what the teacher has emphasised, and what a typical week of homework and assessment looks like at this specific school. From there, tutoring is shaped around that reality rather than a generic version of PYP that may not match what's actually happening in your child's classroom.

Something concrete and specific: a book read with less resistance, number facts recalled faster, a piece of writing with clearer structure, or simply calmer evenings around homework. If nothing like that is visible, ask the tutor directly what's been worked on. Progress at this age is genuinely uneven, sometimes invisible for weeks before it shows up all at once, so one quiet month isn't proof of a bad match on its own — but a tutor who can't explain the plan clearly when asked is a real warning sign worth acting on.

Yes. Alongside subject and IB PYP familiarity — units of inquiry, key concepts, the Learner Profile — tutors working with this age group are checked for conduct appropriate to working with minors, and for the patience and manner that this specific age band needs, which is a different requirement than for a teenager preparing for exams. Parents can ask specific questions about a proposed tutor's experience with this exact age range before agreeing to a first session, and should feel free to do so.

No, and any platform promising that isn't being honest about how young children actually develop. Reading and number-sense growth happens unevenly, in bursts, shaped by the individual child, the school's own teaching and consistency at home as much as by any single tutor. What IB Gram can offer is a tutor with a genuine, checkable background in early literacy or numeracy and in the PYP framework itself, working to a clear plan reviewed regularly with the parent — not a guaranteed outcome, but a properly informed effort toward one.