IB Economics IA Help in Abu Dhabi

It has to cover three separate commentaries, and the help is different for each. Commentary one is usually written before a student knows what good looks like, so it needs article screening and diagram discipline. Commentary two needs the marked commentary one in front of it, so the same marks are not lost twice. Commentary three needs portfolio-level thinking, because by then the unit and key concept options have narrowed to whatever is left.

The first task in a first session is to establish where in that sequence the student is and what has already been marked. A portfolio with one marked commentary is a much better starting point than a portfolio with none, because the teacher's mark names the weakness and the remaining two commentaries can be built around it. Families who come to us after commentary one has been marked low are, counter-intuitively, in a good position.

The second task is the article. A commentary is only as good as the article underneath it, and students choose badly in predictable ways: an article with no clear economic event in it, an article too old to meet the age requirement, an opinion column with no data, or an article so broad that the commentary ends up summarising rather than analysing. Screening an article takes ten minutes and saves a rewrite.

The third is the diagram, which is where three of fourteen marks sit and where most of them leak. We check diagrams the way a marker does: are both axes labelled with the variable and its unit, are the curves labelled, is the shift shown with a direction and the new equilibrium identified, is the diagram numbered and referred to in the text, and does the text explain what the diagram shows rather than restating that it exists.

Each commentary is marked out of 14 across five criteria, and the distribution is strategically important because it is uneven. Diagrams carry three marks, terminology two, application and analysis three, the key concept three, and evaluation three. That means five of the fourteen marks, diagrams and terminology together, are available for technical care rather than for economic insight.

Students and parents both tend to assume the marks sit in the analysis. They do not, or at least not disproportionately: application and analysis is worth the same three marks as the key concept and the same three as evaluation. A commentary with an immaculate analysis, an unlabelled diagram, loose terminology and a two-sentence evaluation is scoring around half of what it could.

The practical consequence is that the cheapest marks in the Economics portfolio are the most mechanical ones. Label the axes. Define the terms you use, in the sentence where you first use them. Number the diagram and refer to it. Name the key concept and return to it in the evaluation. None of that requires a stronger economist, and all of it requires someone to check before submission, which is what a marking session does.

Read the criterion descriptors in your child's own copy of the Economics guide, in the edition their school teaches. We work from the school's wording and reference the guide; we do not reproduce or supply IB documents, past commentaries or mark schemes. Your child's teacher is the authority on how their school applies the criteria, and a marked commentary from them is the most useful document a family can bring to a first session.

The portfolio's constraints interact, and this is the part students discover too late. Each commentary must draw on a different unit from the first three of the syllabus. Each must use a different key concept. Each must be based on a different published article from a different source, and each article must be recent at the time the commentary is written. Satisfy those jointly and the portfolio is coherent; satisfy them one at a time and commentary three becomes an exercise in using whatever is left.

The planning move is to allocate deliberately. A student strong on market failure should spend microeconomics on a concept that rewards that strength rather than on the first concept they thought of. A student who reads global trade coverage should save the global economy unit for the concept of interdependence rather than burning interdependence on a macro commentary. Twenty minutes with a grid solves this, and the grid is the single most useful artefact a portfolio-planning session produces.

The age rule is worth stating precisely because students get it wrong in both directions. The article has to be recent relative to when the commentary is written, not relative to when the portfolio is submitted, so an article chosen in DP1 for commentary one remains valid even when the portfolio is handed in a year later. What does not work is reaching back for an article that was already old when the student found it. Record the publication date and the date of writing on each commentary.

Source variety means three genuinely different publications, not three pieces from the same outlet. In the Gulf that is easy: regional business press, international wire coverage and specialist trade publications all report the same events differently, and a student who uses that difference has material for evaluation as well.

Criterion A is worth three marks per commentary, nine across the portfolio, and it is assessed on technical correctness rather than on sophistication. A perfectly ordinary demand and supply diagram, correctly labelled and properly explained, scores full marks. An ambitious diagram with an unlabelled vertical axis does not. This is the most reliably recoverable set of marks in DP Economics and the most frequently abandoned.

The checks are mechanical. Both axes carry the variable and its unit, so price in dirhams per unit rather than just P. Every curve is labelled, including the new position after a shift. The direction of a shift is shown with an arrow. The original and new equilibrium are both identified. The diagram is numbered and given a title. And the text refers to it by number and explains what it shows about the article's situation rather than describing the diagram's own geometry.

The table below is the checklist we run through on screen with the student's own diagram open. Students usually fix three or four items the first time and then stop making those errors, which is why this is a one-session skill rather than a recurring cost.

One further point on diagram relevance. A diagram that is correct but not connected to the article earns little. If the article is about a minimum wage, the diagram should be a labour market with the minimum wage drawn in and the resulting surplus identified, not a generic market. Criterion A and criterion C are closely linked here, which is why a diagram chosen before the text is written tends to produce a better commentary overall.

Article selection decides more of the mark than students expect, and living in the UAE is an advantage here that most candidates never use. The regional business press reports specific, dated, quantified economic events constantly: fee decisions, utility pricing, trade corridor changes, labour market rules, sector diversification announcements. Those are far better commentary material than a broad international opinion column, because they contain an identifiable change in an identifiable market.

The tests for a usable article are simple. Is there a specific economic event, not a general trend? Is there at least one number in it? Can you draw the relevant diagram from what the article says? Is the publication date recent relative to when you are writing? Is the source different from the ones used for your other commentaries? An article failing the first or third test should be discarded immediately, however interesting it is.

What students should avoid is the article that is really about politics, sport or technology with an economic sentence attached. The commentary has to analyse economics, and an article whose economic content is one paragraph forces the student to supply the economics from elsewhere, which reads as generic under criterion C. The other trap is an article so comprehensive that it already contains the analysis, leaving the student to paraphrase.

Local knowledge also helps evaluation. A student in Abu Dhabi writing about a regional utility price change can discuss the distributional effect on households in a way that is grounded rather than theoretical, and can question whether the article's framing captures it. That is criterion E material that a candidate reading the same story from a distance cannot produce.

Criterion E is worth three marks and is the criterion most often lost to arithmetic rather than to thinking: the student wrote 700 words of application and had 100 left for evaluation. The structural fix is to allocate the words before writing. Roughly 150 for context and the diagram's setup, 350 for application and analysis, 150 for the key concept doing real work, and 150 for evaluation leaves a commentary that scores across all five criteria instead of three.

Good evaluation in 150 words is prioritised rather than balanced. Listing an advantage and a disadvantage is not evaluation; stating which effect dominates and why, under what assumption, and what would change the conclusion, is. Short run against long run is the most reliable structure available in this space, because almost every economic intervention has a different effect over different horizons and saying so takes two sentences.

The second reliable move is to question the article itself. Its data may be a single quarter, its framing may suit a particular interest, its claim may rest on an assumption about elasticity that nobody states. A student who identifies that assumption and says what happens if it fails is doing exactly what the criterion asks for, and is also using material no other candidate has.

The third is the key concept. Criterion D and criterion E reinforce each other: a commentary whose key concept reappears in the evaluation, shaping the judgement rather than decorating the introduction, tends to score well on both. A commentary where the concept appears once in the opening sentence usually scores one out of three on D and little better on E.

Each commentary is assessed work and must be the student's own. The IB treats a breach as malpractice affecting the whole Diploma, not one subject grade. There are providers in this market advertising finished coursework, and a family buying a commentary is buying a risk to the award. The line is worth stating in detail here, because Economics commentaries are short enough that the temptation to supply a paragraph is unusually strong.

A tutor may teach the economics, screen an article for viability, check a diagram label by label, mark a draft against the five criteria, point out that an evaluation lists rather than judges, explain why a term is being used loosely, demonstrate a diagram on an article the student is not using, and help plan the allocation of units and key concepts across the portfolio. A tutor may also say that a commentary is good enough and needs no further sessions.

A tutor may not supply the text, draw the student's diagrams for them, select the article on their behalf or rewrite a paragraph into a better version to be pasted. The student clicks the mouse on their own diagram. That sounds pedantic and it is the practical line that keeps the work theirs, particularly in a task where a tutor could produce a competent 800 words in twenty minutes.

Keep the article itself, with its publication date, attached to each commentary as the school requires, and keep dated drafts. A portfolio where each commentary can be traced from article to plan to draft to final version is the strongest evidence of authorship a student can hold, and building it as you go costs nothing.

The portfolio is written across more than a year, which makes it the only IB internal assessment where the scheduling question is about spacing rather than about a single deadline. Schools in Abu Dhabi typically set commentary one in DP1, commentary two near the end of DP1 or early in DP2, and commentary three in DP2 before the heaviest paper revision. Working back from the school's dates, the useful rhythm is article chosen two weeks before each deadline, diagram and plan one week before, draft written and marked with a week to spare.

Ramadan shifts the evening across the emirate: school days shorten and the usual late-afternoon slot stops working, so sessions move to post-iftar timing rather than pausing. If a commentary deadline falls inside Ramadan, the practical move is to choose the article before it starts, since article hunting is the part of the task that needs the most unbroken attention. Students sitting Cambridge or Pearson qualifications alongside should note that UAE candidates sit the June and November series; the Cambridge February and March series is offered in India only.

On cost, the natural unit for this task is the commentary rather than the hour. Two sessions per commentary, six across the portfolio, spread over more than a year, is a very different purchase from six sessions in one month, and a family can stop after the first commentary if the marks improve on their own. Published UAE rates, read in October 2026: Tutopiya from AED 33 to 52 an hour, EdFlik from AED 45 to 65, Unitors IGCSE from AED 150 and IB from AED 200, TutorChase AED 270, Bestimate's 2026 survey putting IB specialists at AED 200 to 450 and above, in-home visits at AED 180 to 350 and independent home tutors at AED 200 to 500, and BartyED at AED 650 for a named tutor. Those are their figures, not ours.

Our own position: we quote after the free trial lesson, and for most portfolios we recommend buying commentary by commentary rather than committing to the full six sessions upfront. If commentary two scores well without us, there is no reason to book for commentary three.